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Austria refused to recognize Philip, a Bourbon

a Bourbon king in Spain would disrupt the balance of power in Europe in favour of French hegemony

Spain under a Bourbon king as a political and commercial appendage of France

He wished to regenerate and strengthen his ally by a modern centralized administration

the allied armies of Britain and Austria invaded Spain in order to drive out Philip V and establish the “Austrian” candidate, the archduke Charles (later the Holy Roman emperor Charles VI), on the throne

An efficient administration had to be created in order to extract resources from Spain for the war effort and thus relieve pressure on the French treasury

Castile was ferociously loyal to the new dynasty throughout the war. The support of Castile and of France (until 1711) enabled Philip V to survive severe defeats

Spanish lawyer-administrators such as Melchor de Macanaz

They were supported by the queen, María Luisa of Savoy

The opponents of reform were those who suffered by it

Catalonia, Aragon, and Valencia

a Castilian centralizing imposition in conflict with the local privileges, or fueros

the church, whose position was threatened by the ferocious and doctrinaire regalism of Macanaz

The disaffection of all these elements easily turned into opposition to Philip V as king

war taxation and war levies drove Catalonia and Aragon to revolt

When Philip V tried to attack Catalonia through Aragon, the Aragonese, in the name of their fueros, revolted against the passage of Castilian troops

When the archbishop of Valencia resisted attempts to make priests of doubtful loyalty appear before civil courts, the regalism of Macanaz was given full course

This was the last direct triumph of the reformers. With the death of Queen María Luisa in 1714

Macanaz was condemned by the Inquisition

the fueros were abolished and Catalonia was integrated into Spain

The “Italian” tendency was influenced by Philip V’s second wife, Isabella, and her desire to get Italian thrones for her sons.

The attempt to recover the possessions in Italy involved Spain in an unsuccessful war with Austria, which was now the great power in Italy

Nevertheless, Isabella’s persistence was rewarded when her son, the future King Charles III of Spain, became the duke of Parma in 1731 and king of Naples in 1733, relinquishing his claims to Parma

The “Italian” and “Atlantic” tendencies existed side by side in the late years of Philip V’s reign

It made possible an alliance of France and Spain against Austria, giving Isabella the opportunity to settle her second son, Philip, in an Italian duchy

Ferdinand VI (1746–59) was concerned with the domestic recovery of Spain rather than the extension of its power in Europe

the treaty merely strengthened Spain’s position in Italy when Philip became duke of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla. The Atlantic tendency became dominant under Ferdinand VI

Because Britain was Spain’s most significant enemy in the Americas (as Austria had been in Italy), Spain’s “natural” ally was France

hence a series of family pacts with France in 1733 and 1743

The American interest was reflected in increased trade

Charles III, Ferdinand’s successor, implemented dramatic reforms that followed along the path set by Ferdinand.

and made Austria a great European power

spheres within Qing China that were taken by eight different foreign nations late in the nineteenth century.

The eight nations' spheres in Qing China were designated primarily for trade purposes.

Great Britain, France, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, Italy, Russia, the United States, and Japan each had exclusive special trading rights, including low tariffs and free trade, within Chinese territory.

  They laid siege to the foreign legations in Peking, but a joint Eight Power naval invasion force rescued the legation staff after almost two months of fighting.

Many ordinary Chinese did not approve of these arrangements, and in 1900 the Boxer Rebellion broke out.  The Boxers aimed to rid Chinese soil of all foreign devils.  At first, their targets included the ethnic-Manchu Qing rulers, but the Boxers and the Qing soon joined forces against the agents of the foreign powers.

In addition, each of the foreign powers had the right to establish a legation in Peking (now Beijing), and the citizens of these powers had extraterritorial rights while on Chinese soil.

Britain wanted to protect its "crown jewel" colony, British India, from Russian expansion.

To keep the peace between themselves, the British and Russians agreed that Britain would have a sphere of influence including most of eastern Persia, while Russia would have a sphere of influence over northern Persia.

Today, the phrase "sphere of influence" has lost some of its punch. Real estate agents and retail malls use the term to designate the neighborhoods from which they draw most of their customers or in which they do most of their business.

Japan's nationalism was aggressive and expansionist, allowing Japan itself to become one of the imperial powers in an astonishingly short amount of time. China's nationalism, in contrast, was reactive and disorganized, leaving the country in chaos and at the mercy of foreign powers until 1949.

The foreign powers wanted access to China's other ports and to its interior.The First and Second Opium Wars (1839-42 and 1856-60) between China and Britain ended in humiliating defeat for China, which had to agree to give foreign traders, diplomats, soldiers, and missionaries access rights.

As a result, China fell under economic imperialism, with different western powers carving out "spheres of influence" in Chinese territory along the coast.

In 1853, however, this peace was shattered when a squadron of American steam-powered warships under Commodore Matthew Perry showed up in Edo Bay (now Tokyo Bay) and demanded the right to refuel in Japan.

In 1894-95, the people of China suffered another shocking blow to their sense of national pride. Japan, which had at times been a tributary state of China's in the past, defeated the Middle Kingdom in the First Sino-Japanese War and took control of Korea. Now China was being humiliated not only by the Europeans and Americans but also by one of their nearest neighbors, traditionally a subordinate power.

As a result, the people of China rose up in anti-foreigner fury once more in 1899-1900. The Boxer Rebellion began as equally anti-European and anti-Qing, but soon the people and the Chinese government joined forces to oppose the imperial powers. An eight-nation coalition of the British, French, Germans, Austrians, Russians, Americans, Italians, and Japanese defeated both the Boxer Rebels and the Qing Army, driving Empress Dowager Cixi and Emperor Guangxu out of Beijing.

Foreign Christian missionaries fanned out in the countryside, converting some Chinese to Catholicism or Protestantism, and threatening traditional Buddhist and Confucian beliefs.

For 250 years, Japan existed in quiet and peace under the Tokugawa Shoguns (1603-1853). The famed samurai warriors were reduced to working as bureaucrats and writing wistful poetry because there were no wars to fight. The only foreigners allowed in Japan were a handful of Chinese and Dutch traders, who were confined to an island in Nagasaki Bay.

China slipped into a decades-long civil war between the nationalists and the communists that only ended in 1949​ when Mao Zedong and the Communist Party prevailed.

this development sparked anti-foreign and nationalist feelings in the Japanese people and caused the government to fall. However, unlike China, the leaders of Japan took this opportunity to thoroughly reform their country. They quickly turned it from an imperial victim to an aggressive imperial power in its own right.

With China's recent Opium War humiliation as a warning, the Japanese started with a complete overhaul of their government and social system. Paradoxically, this modernization drive centered around the Meiji Emperor, from an imperial family that had ruled the country for 2,500 years. For centuries, however, the emperors had been figureheads, while the shoguns wielded actual power.

Japan's new constitution also did away with the feudal social classes, made all of the samurai and daimyo into commoners, established a modern conscript military, required basic elementary education for all boys and girls, and encouraged the development of heavy industry.

Japan refused to bow to the Europeans, they would prove that Japan was a great, modern power, and Japan would rise to be the "Big Brother" of all of the colonized and down-trodden peoples of Asia.

In the space of a single generation, Japan became a major industrial power with a well-disciplined modern army and navy. This new Japan shocked the world in 1895 when it defeated China in the First Sino-Japanese War. That was nothing, however, compared to the complete panic that erupted in Europe when Japan beat Russia (a European power!) in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05.

While nationalism helped to fuel Japan's incredibly quick development into a major industrialized nation and an imperial power and helped it fend off the western powers, it certainly had a dark side as well. For some Japanese intellectuals and military leaders, nationalism developed into fascism, similar to what was happening in the newly-unified European powers of Germany and Italy. This hateful and genocidal ultra-nationalism led Japan down the road to military overreach, war crimes, and eventual defeat in World War II

It ruled over the western reaches of the late Silk Road, although the overland trade routes were quickly being supplanted by ocean-going trading vessels

The greatest Safavid ruler was Shah Abbas I (r. 1587 - 1629), who modernized the Persian militar

  It is also known for its doctrine of the Three Truths; its classification of Buddhist doctrines into Five Periods and Eight Teachings; and its particular form of meditation.

Tiantai Buddhism in Japan as Tendai, which for a time was the dominant school of Buddhism in Japan.

In 845 the Tang Dynasty Emperor Wuzong ordered all "foreign" religions in China, which included Buddhism, to be eliminated.

However, Tiantai did not become extinct in China. In time, with the help of Korean disciples, Guoqing was rebuilt and copies of essential texts were returned to the mountain.

Tiantai had regained some of its footing by the year 1000, when a doctrinal dispute split the school in half and generated a few centuries' worth of treatises and commentaries.

The Three Truths proposes a "middle" acting as an interface of sorts between the absolute and the conventional.

This "middle" is the omniscient mind of Buddha, which takes in all phenomenal reality, both pure and impure.

These were (1) the period in the Buddha's life in which a sutra was preached; (2) the audience that first heard the sutra; (3) the teaching method the Buddha used to make his point.

Zhiyi identified five distinct periods of the Buddha's life, and sorted texts accordingly into the Five Periods.

He identified three kinds of audiences and five kinds of methods, and these became the Eight Teachings.

Although the Five Periods are not historically accurate, and scholars of other schools might differ with the Eight Teachings, Zhiyi's classification system was internally logical and gave Tiantai a solid foundation.

In different ways, much of Zhiyi's teaching lives on in Pure Land and Nichiren Buddhism, as well as Zen.

the Parthians never conquered Syria.

Eventually, it extended from the Euphrates to the Indus Rivers, covering Iran, Iraq, and most of Afghanistan.

The capital of the Parthian Empire was originally Arsak, but it later moved to Ctesiphon.

A Sassanid prince from Fars (Persis, in southern Iran), rebelled against the last Parthian king, the Arsacid Artabanus V, thereby starting the Sassanid era.

The government of the Parthian Empire has been described as an unstable, decentralized political system, but also a step in the direction "of the first highly integrated, bureaucratically complex empires in Southwest Asia

Many western history books over the years have stated that the Chinese used this discovery only for fireworks, but that is not true. Song Dynasty military forces as early as 904 A.D. used gunpowder devices against their primary enemy, the Mongols. These weapons included "flying fire" (fei huo), an arrow with a burning tube of gunpowder attached to the shaft.

Flying fire arrows were miniature rockets, which propelled themselves into enemy ranks and inspired terror among both men and horses. It must have seemed like fearsome magic to the first warriors who were confronted with the power of gunpowder.

By the mid- to late-eleventh century, the Song government had become concerned about gunpowder technology spreading to other countries. The sale of saltpeter to foreigners was banned in 1076. Nonetheless, knowledge of the miraculous substance was carried along the Silk Road to India, the Middle East, and Europe. In 1267, a European writer made reference to gunpowder, and by 1280 the first recipes for the explosive mixture were published in the west. China's secret was out.

The "Great Fifth" lived in a time of volatile political upheaval. He persevered through adversity and unified Tibet under his rule as the first of the Dalai Lamas to be political and spiritual leaders of Tibet.

Sangye Gyatso and a few co-conspirators kept the 5th Dalai Lama's death a secret for 15 years.

the deception averted possible power struggles and allowed for a peaceful transition to the rule of the 6th Dalai Lama.

The boy identified as the Great Fifth's rebirth was Sanje Tenzin, born in 1683 to noble family that lived in the border lands near Bhutan.

The search for him had been carried out in secret.

In 1697 the death of the Great Fifth finally was announced, and 14-year-old Sanje Tenzin was brought in great fanfare to Lhasa to be enthroned as His Holiness the 6th Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, meaning "Ocean of Divine Song." He moved into the just-completed Potala Palace to begin his new life.

The teenager's studies continued, but as time passed he showed less and less interest in them. As the day approached for his full monk's ordination he balked, then renounced his novice ordination. He began to visit taverns at night and was seen staggering drunkenly through the streets of Lhasa with his friends. He dressed in the silk clothes of a nobleman. He kept a tent outside Potala Palace where he would bring young women.

The Great Fifth's chief military ally had been a Mongol tribal chief named Gushi Khan. Now a grandson of Gushi Khan decided it was time to take affairs in Lhasa in hand and claim his grandfather's title, king of Tibet. The grandson, Lhasang Khan, eventually gathered an army and took Lhasa by force. Sangye Gyatso went into exile, but Lhasang Khan arranged his assassination, in 1701.

To soften this alliance, the Emperor sent word to Tibet's Mongol allies that Sangye Gyatso's concealment of the Great Fifth's death was an act of betrayal. The Desi was trying to rule Tibet himself, the Emperor said.Indeed, Sangye Gyatso had become accustomed to managing Tibet's affairs on his own, and he was having a hard time letting go, especially when the Dalai Lama was mostly interested in wine, women and song.

At this time China was ruled by the Kangxi Emperor, one of the most formidable rulers of China's long history. Tibet, through its alliance with fierce Mongol warriors, posed a potential military threat to China.

Now Lhasang Khan turned his attention to the dissolute Dalai Lama. In spite of his outrageous behavior he was a charming young man, popular with Tibetans. The would-be king of Tibet began to see the Dalai Lama as a threat to his authority.

Lhasang Khan sent a letter to the Kangxi Emperor asking if the Emperor would support deposing the Dalai Lama. The Emperor instructed the Mongol to bring the young lama to Beijing; then a decision would be made what to do about him.

Then the warlord found Gelugpa lamas willing to sign an agreement that the Dalai Lama was not fulfilling his spiritual responsibilities.

Remarkably, monks were able to overwhelm the guards and take the Dalai Lama back to Lhasa, to Drepung Monastery.

He left the monastery with some devoted friends who insisted on coming with him. Lhasang Khan accepted the Dalai Lama's surrender and then had his friends slaughtered.

There is no record of exactly what caused the 6th Dalai Lama's death, only that he died in November 1706 as the traveling party approached China's central plain. He was 24 years old

The 6th Dalai Lama's chief legacy are his poems, said to be among the loveliest in Tibetan literature. Many are about love, longing, and heartbreak. Some are erotic. And some reveal a bit of his feelings about his position and his life, such as this one:

superior weaponry, a strong profit motive, and Eurocentric confidence.

At first, the European powers in Asia were solely interested in trade, but over time, the acquisition of territory grew in importance. Among the nations looking for a piece of the action was Britain.

Britain had been trading in India since about 1600, but it did not begin to seize large sections of land until 1757, after the Battle of Plassey. This battle pitted 3,000 soldiers of the British East India Company against the 5,000-strong army of the young Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud Daulah, and his French East India Company allies.

Heavy rain spoiled the Nawab's cannon powder (the British covered theirs), leading to his defeat.

The East India Company traded in cotton, silk, tea, and opium. Following the Battle of Plassey, it functioned as the military authority in growing sections of India, as well.

heavy Company taxation and other policies had left millions of Bengalis impoverished. While British soldiers and traders made their fortunes, the Indians starved.

Indians also were barred from high office in their own land. The British considered them inherently corrupt and untrustworthy.

Many Indians were distressed by the rapid cultural changes imposed by the British. They worried that Hindu and Muslim India would be Christianized.

new type of rifle cartridge was given to the soldiers of the British Indian Army.

Rumors spread that the cartridges had been greased with pig and cow fat, an abomination to both major Indian religions.

During World War I, Britain declared war on Germany on India's behalf, without consulting Indian leaders.

It should be noted that the British Raj included only about two-thirds of modern India, with the other portions under the control of local princes. However, Britain exerted a lot of pressure on these princes, effectively controlling all of India.

Queen Victoria promised that the British government would work to "better" its Indian subjects. To the British, this meant educating them in British modes of thought and stamping out cultural practices such as sati.

The British also practiced "divide and rule" policies, pitting Hindu and Muslim Indians against one another.

Muslim League of India in 1907. The Indian Army was made up mostly of Muslims, Sikhs, Nepalese Gurkhas, and other minority groups, as well.

Following the Rebellion of 1857–1858, the British government abolished both the Mughal Dynasty, which had ruled India more or less for 300 years, and the East India Company. The Emperor, Bahadur Shah, was convicted of sedition and exiled to

When World War II broke out, once again, India contributed hugely to the British war effort.

The Indian independence movement was very strong by this time, though, and British rule was widely resented

. Some 30,000 Indian POWs were recruited by the Germans and Japanese to fight against the Allies, in exchange for their freedom. Most, however, remained loyal. Indian troops fought in Burma, North Africa, Italy, and elsewhere.

In any case, Gandhi and the INC did not trust the British envoy and demanded immediate independence in return for their cooperation. When the talks broke down, the INC launched the "Quit India" movement, calling for the immediate withdrawal of Britain from India.

The offer of independence had been made, however. Britain may not have realized it, but it was now just a question of when the British Raj would end.

violent fighting broke out between Hindus and Muslims in Calcutta. The trouble quickly spread across India. Meanwhile, cash-strapped Britain announced its decision to withdraw from India

Sectarian violence flared again as independence approached. In June of 1947, representatives of the Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs agreed to divide India along sectarian lines. Hindu and Sikh areas stayed in India, while predominantly Muslim areas in the north became the nation of Pakistan.

. Unlike their nomadic ancestors, the Barlas were settled agriculturalists and traders.

"Tamerlane or Timur: The Great Amir," states that Timur was descended from Genghis Khan on his mother's side; it is not entirely clear whether that is true.

During Timur's youth, Transoxiana was riven by conflict between the local nomadic clans and the sedentary Chagatay Mongol khans who ruled them. The Chagatay had abandoned the mobile ways of Genghis Khan and their other ancestors and taxed the people heavily in order to support their urban lifestyle. Naturally, this taxation angered their citizens.

Timur was not directly descended from Genghis Khan on his father's side, so he ruled as an amir (from the Arabic word for "prince"), rather than as khan.

Timur invaded Russia in 1380. He helped the Mongol Khan Toktamysh retake control, and also defeated the Lithuanians in battle.  Timur captured Herat

the opening salvo against Persia. By 1385, all of Persia was his.  

Persia revolted. He responded by leveling entire cities and using the citizens' skulls to build grisly towers and pyramids.

Timur fought against his former protege in Russia, Toktamysh. The Timurid army captured Moscow

The Turkic/Mongol invaders left carnage along their path; Delhi's army was destroyed in December, and the city ruined. Timur seized tons of treasure and 90 war elephants and took them back to Samarkand.

Timur captured early Ottoman Turkey and received the submission of Egypt.

The rulers of Europe were glad that the Ottoman Turk sultan Bayazid had been defeated, but they trembled at the idea that "Tamerlane" was at their doorstep. The rulers of Spain, France, and other powers sent congratulatory embassies to Timur, hoping to stave off an attack.

Timur had bigger goals, though. He decided in 1404 that he would conquer Ming China.

the Timurid army set out in December, during an unusually cold winter. Men and horses died of exposure

Timur started life as the son of a minor chieftain, much like his putative ancestor Genghis Khan. Through sheer intelligence, military skill and force of personality, Timur was able to conquer an empire stretching from Russia to India, and from the Mediterranean Sea to Mongolia.

Unlike Genghis Khan, however, Timur conquered not to open trade routes and protect his flanks, but to loot and pillage. The Timurid Empire did not long survive its founder because he rarely bothered to put any governmental structure in place after he destroyed the existing order.

While Timur professed to be a good Muslim, he obviously felt no compunction about destroying the jewel-cities of Islam

Damascus, Khiva, Baghdad... these ancient capitals of Islamic learning never really recovered from Timur's attentions.

Timur's line had better luck in India, where his great-great-grandson Babur founded the Mughal Dynasty in 1526. The Mughals ruled until 1857 when the British expelled them. (Shah Jahan, the builder of the Taj Mahal, is thus also a descendant of Timur.)

The consequences were astonishing: World War I left more people dead than any war in history and left Europe in shambles. By then, Queen Victoria had been dead for 17 years, but the marriages she pushed for with such authority and optimism still reverberated through Europe.

Today, Britain’s monarch exercises less power over royal marriages. Though the monarch must still give approval for royal weddings, sprawling royal dynasties are no longer engineered via matchmaking. But for many, says Cadbury, the idea of royal matchmaking feels like “the ultimate fairytale.”

elected king of Poland

one of early modern Europe’s most notorious and intriguing monarchs

After the conclusion of the Thirty Years War in 1648, conflict between France and Spain continued

Spain was in precipitous decline and France was Europe’s dominant military power under Louis XIV

For the next 200 years, Spain followed closely the French project of centralisation under an absolutist monarchy with the imposition of a centralised state model

in 1701, Spain’s weakness was starkly revealed by the War of the Spanish Succession, caused when the Spanish King Charles II died without an heir in 1700. Two of Europe’s leading monarchical powers, the House of Habsburg led by Austria, and the Bourbons led by France, fought to place their candidate on the Spanish throne, with the French candidate Philip V (the Duke of Anjou) crowned on 1 November 1700. The victory of the French Bourbon Dynasty represented a severe defeat for Catalonia, as well as the other territories of Aragon. It meant that Spain would henceforth follow the centralising French state tradition

No Spanish city experienced more political violence and the Spanish military and police stepped in to perform suppressive roles frequently between 1902 and 1923

In 1898 Spain suffered military defeats to the United States, losing its remaining overseas territories

The conflict over differing conceptions of Spain – and the role of national diversity within it – was brought to a head in 1936 with the outbreak of Civil War

the departure of Catalonia would be a disaster for Spain

after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of communism in 1989, the association of the independence movement with the revolutionary left waned. In the 1990s, the concept of independence increasingly entered mainstream political discourse

Today, the struggle for Catalan independence can be considered a middle class revolt.

The King also, in 1433, made his young half-brother, Edmund, earl of Richmond, and, two years later, arranged his momentous marriage with Lady Margaret Beaufort, daughter of the Duke of Somerset. About the same time he created Jasper earl of Pembroke. Naturally, when civil war broke out, their father supported his step-son, the King. But he was taken prisoner early in the war, at the disastrous battle of Mortimer’s Cross, and was executed at Hereford. He is said to have remarked ruefully as he placed his head on the block that it was “wont to lie on Queen Catherine’s lap.” His head was placed on the market cross, where a mad woman came and combed his hair and washed his face, and set it around with lighted candles. His body was buried in the chapel of the Grey Friars at Hereford

Even his cousin, Maredudd, the only surviving son of the rebel, Glyn Dwr, is known to have become “squire of the body” to King Henry V

It would be tempting to believe that he had taken the opposite side in the revolt; this would explain many things, but it is contradicted by the known fact that his possessions, like those of his brothers, were confiscated. And yet his son became a page in the household of King Henry V, the oppressor of the family. This son, whether he was bom in exile or not, bore the name of the rebel chieftain, Owain

It was in Jasper’s great castle of Pembroke that Edmund’s son, Henry Tudor, was born posthumously on January 28th, 1457. The child’s mother, the Lady Margaret, had not then yet reached the age of fourteen.

But the defeat of the Lancastrians at Tewkesbury in 1471, and the death of both King Henry VI and his heir, Prince Edward, led to a complete reversal of fortune

Prophecy in general terms had been easy enough, but the result of a specific event was not so easy to foretell. The bard, in a quandary, consulted his wife, who told him to prophesy victory, for if the prince were successful he might reward the prophet, but if he were unsuccessful he was not likely to return.

Henry promised to deliver the Welsh from “such miserable servitudes as they have pyteously longe stand in,” that is to say, from the penal laws of King Henry IV. This he did not do, for the laws remained on the statute book till the reign of James I

In his exile, Henry had fathered a son by a Breton lady. He was called Roland Velville, and his father knighted him when he ascended the throne and made him constable of Beaumaris Castle. Velville died in 1527, five years before the marriage of his daughter Jane to Tudur ap Robert Fychan, of Berain in modem Denbighshire

He was an associate of Sir Thomas Gresham, and had made much money in trade with the Netherlands. When he did die, Catherine did take Maurice Wynn as her third husband, thereby becoming step-mother to the writer Sir John Wynn of Gwydir

By that time the Tudors had been on the throne for a hundred years, and such Welsh sentiment as they had ever possessed was already worn thin.

the trouble with that argument is that—like culture—power also ebbs and flows. Customs we may think of as immemorially inherent in one culture very often originated in that culture’s own history of empire and domination

All cultures have histories. Young people born in North America may imagine that their grandmother’s recipes or wardrobe emerged autochthonously in a timeless ancestral homeland. But that only reflects how thoroughly they have Americanized themselves, reducing other countries’ complexities to folklores to be fetishized rather than understood and evaluated on their own terms.

They took something foreign and made it something domestic, in a pattern that has repeated itself in endless variations since the Neolithic period.

For whatever reason it happened, the idea that clothing styles should change regularly and often for no very compelling reason is one of Europe’s most distinctive contributions to world culture. Before their encounter with European culture, nobody else saw the point of it.

With the cheongsam, fashion in the European sense came to China. In the decades from 1915 to 1950, the cheongsam changed more than women’s costume did in the previous 250 years.

Like the idea that audiences should refrain from talking while music is performed, the idea that women should be able to move about as freely and easily as men is a cultural product—popularized by the North Atlantic world in the period after the First World War.

If it’s wrong for one culture to borrow from another, then it was wrong to invent the cheongsam in the first place—because not only did the garment’s shape originate outside China, but so, too, did the garment’s purposes. It was precisely because they appreciated that they were importing Western ideas about women that the inventors of the cheongsam adapted a Western shape.

The Chinese dress young Kezia Daum wanted to wear to prom originated in a brutal act of imperialism, but not by any western people

The policemen of cultural appropriation do not think that way. They have a morality tale to tell, one of Western victimization of non-Western peoples—a victimization so extreme that it is triggered by a Western girl’s purchase of a Chinese dress designed precisely so that Chinese girls could live more like Western girls.

How to draw the line between that and America’s ugly tradition of minstrelsy, in which subordinated peoples are both mimicked and mocked—as Al Jolson mimicked and mocked black music in his notorious blackface career? There is no clear rule, but there is an open way: the values of respect and tolerance that draw precisely on the rationalist Enlightenment traditions both rejected and relied upon by the cultural-appropriation police

The would-be culture police build their whole philosophy on a single assumption of extreme chauvinism: that Western culture is universal—indeed the only universal culture.

Western technology, the Western emphasis on individual autonomy and equal human dignity, and even such oddly specific Western practices as death-metal music—the cultural police take all this for granted as thoroughly as a fish takes for granted the water in its fishbowl.

It’s a free society, do what you like! But please remember, as you do so, that this “freedom” you use is itself a cultural product, with its own origins in precisely the culture you traduce.

The Western culture of personal autonomy and equal dignity is a precious thing precisely because it is not universal. Those who participate in that culture and enjoy its benefits may hope—do hope—that it may someday become universal

If anything, that culture is at present in retreat, challenged and assailed both at home and abroad. It needs defending, and to be defended effectively it is vital to understand precisely how non-universal it is.

To the extent that the cultural-appropriation police are urging their targets to respect others who are different, they are saying something that everyone needs to hear

beyond that, they can plunge into doomed tangles.

In order to tell that story, the policemen of cultural appropriation must crush and deform much of the truth of cultural history—and in the process demean and infantilize the people they supposedly champion.

Those traditions are the spiritual core of American culture at its highest. And those values we should all hope to see appropriated by all this planet’s peoples and cultures.

When the Manchu dynasty was finally overthrown in 1911, Chinese people found themselves free for the first time in 250 years to dress as they pleased. In the decade afterward, creative personalities in the great commercial metropolis of Shanghai devised a new kind of garment for women. They called it the cheongsam.

The new garment was a fusion of old and new, east and west. Manchurian-style fabrics were tailored to a European-style pattern

The cheongsam was equally available to women from a wide range of statuses—and enabled Chinese women to move as their western counterparts did.

Henry was the sixth child and fourth son of Henry II and Catherine de’ Medici

France had been embroiled in a civil war between the crown and its Protestant or Huguenot subjects since 1562. In 1567 Henry took command of the royal army

He travelled to Poland with an entourage, but during the summer of 1574 he was informed of the death of his brother, Charles IX. He thus became king of both France and Poland

Without so much as bidding adieu to his Polish subjects, Henry made haste to  return to France by way of Austria and northern Italy

In February 1575 he married Louise de Vaudémont, a princess of the House of Lorraine, whose beauty had dazzled him on the eve of his departure for Poland

The situation had been aggravated by the accidental death of Henry II in 1559, which had left the kingdom in the hands of his widow, Catherine de’ Medici, and her young sons. As queen mother under Francis II, then as regent under Charles IX

In the absence of Henry begetting a son, the heir to the throne was his brother-in-law Henry of Navarre (1553-1610), who, as a Huguenot, was unacceptable to the Catholic majority in France. In 1576, a group of cities headed by Paris had formed an armed association, called the Catholic League, aimed at excluding Navarre from the throne. It chose Charles, cardinal of Bourbon,

As king, Henry III was apparently well-intentioned towards his subjects regardless of their faith. As he returned to Lyon from Poland in 1574, he declared a wish to be at peace with them all, and he seemed better equipped than his recent predecessors to succeed. He was probably the most intellectually gifted of the later Valois kings

The task of ruling France that the king faced in 1574 was far from easy, as so much hatred had arisen between Catholics and Huguenots

The court’s extravagance at a time of severe economic crisis incurred much criticism

He believed that his authority would be enhanced by distancing himself from his subjects

Although Henry III valued privacy, he liked to surround himself with a select group of intimate friends, mostly men of his own generation who came to be known as mignons

Whereas Charles IX had taken part in 109 civic entries during his ‘Grand Tour of France’ in 1564-66, Henry had only four in his entire reign

The king of France is so familiar with his subjects that he treats them all as his companions and no one is ever excluded from his presence, so that even lackeys of the lower sort are bold enough to wish to enter his privy chamber in order to see all that is going on there and to hear all that is being said… This familiarity, if it makes the nation insolent and arrogant, nevertheless inspires love, devotion and loyalty to its prince.

The supreme irony of Henry III’s reign was his failure to win over the capital by his presence

aloofness, extravagance and eccentricity

Believing Guise to be plotting a coup d’etat, Henry decided to exterminate him. Having lured the duke to his antechamber at Blois, the king stood by as his guards hacked Guise to death

This cold-blooded murder was by far Henry’s biggest blunder

Henry III’s only hope of regaining control of the capital was to join forces with  his appointed heir, the Huguenot leader, Henry of Navarre

Henry III on his deathbed appointing Navarre as his successor

Neither intellect nor good intentions had been sufficient to gain Henry III the love of his subjects. His life had been a tragedy

It might fairly be asked why the Emperor Charles V did not dispose of the Valois challenge more quickly.

In 1519 he was elected Holy Roman Emperor, ruler of Germany

Francis, in turn, harboured a deep-seated resentment against Charles

The kingdom had recently been consolidated by the incorporation of great provinces like Burgundy and Brittany

This explains why the history of the Habsburg-Valois rivalry is one where intensive periods of bloody fighting were followed so often by stalemate and financial exhaustion

The two kings [Henry II and Philip II] realised that if they attempted to mount another campaign in 1559, they might stretch their finances and the loyalty of their subjects to breaking point

In waging war he could only really rely on the financial support of the Netherlands and Castile, and as the Habsburg-Valois wars persisted he, and his successor Philip II, found himself plundering both territories to their absolute limits

In the mind of the young Charles V, no family ambition loomed larger than that of recovering his ancestral lands of Burgundy from the French

Much of the Habsburg-Valois rivalry revolved around rival ambitions in Italy

Habsburg-Valois conflict to an end was that the conflict was essentially a dynastic one; the rivalry was between two proud ruling families who were determined to protect the achievements of their forbears and to enhance the reputation and power of their family, or dynasty

This helps to explain why the House of Habsburg and the House of Valois persisted for so long in their conflict with such a disregard for the damaging consequences to their lands and peoples

Francis's successor, Henry II, had spent three years as a hostage of the Habsburgs in Spain, after the Treaty of Madrid, and as King of France from 1547 he exhibited an animosity to the Habsburgs that perhaps exceeded even that of his father

The continuation of the Habsburg-Valois conflict was also a tremendous boon to the Ottoman Sultan. He aimed to extend Muslim Ottoman power into Europe. The major obstacle to expansion were, firstly, the Austrian Habsburg lands in central Europe, ruled by Charles V's brother Ferdinand, and, secondly, the military and naval presence of the Habsburgs in the Mediterranean

The impression is often given that Charles abandoned his claim to Burgundy in the Peace of Cambrai in 1529

Thus for Charles V his personal rivalry with Francis I was overlaid by a sense of injustice at what he perceived to be the theft of his family's Burgundian inheritance by the Valois kings

It was also here that the deeply felt dynastic rivalry between the Houses of Habsburg and Valois was at its most acute. Throughout the long conflict the French chafed at Habsburg control of the kingdom of Naples

Charles V consequently acquired Naples when he inherited the kingdom of Aragon in1516

Francis and his successor Henry II continued to press French claims to Naples

The House of Valois did periodically renounce its claim when peace with the Habsburgs was expedient or unavoidable

Francis I's successor, Henry II, continued to uphold the Valois claim and in 1557 launched a final and unavailing assault on the kingdom.

The House of Valois felt strongly that they had the strongest dynastic claim to the Duchy of Milan

When Charles V had acquired his extensive empire by 1519 he regarded Milan not only as a satellite of the Empire

The Habsburg-Valois wars were, then, to a very significant extent, an unremitting struggle for mastery over Milan

The conflict between the Habsburgs and the Valois appeared at times to escalate into something approaching a general European war. The German Protestants, the lesser powers of Europe and even the superpower of the Ottoman empire were all drawn into the fray at various times

Henry VIII of England took a distinctly opportunistic view of the conflict. When he was anxious to undermine Habsburg predominance in Europe he sided with the French

Charles believed that he had triumphantly achieved his great dynastic dream in 1526, when the defeated and captive Francis I agreed to surrender the territory in the Treaty of Madrid

the Sultan was brought into an anti- Habsburg alliance by the French firstly in 1536 and, later, in 1542

And in all this he had invoked a version of medieval constitutionalism rooted in feudal law: that, regardless of the will of Louis XI, it was his right with his fellow princes to control the royal council and to exercise powers of regency during Charles VIII's minority

Such judgements spring partly from the impact of French incursions upon Italy itself, closely followed as they were by interventions from a Spain newly unified under its Catholic kings.

'For France', according to Henri Lapeyre, 'a new destiny opened with the expedition of Charles VIII'. And according to Roger Doucet, although 'neither Charles VIII nor Louis Xll had any great gifts of government', during their reigns 'a great change took place, a change which may be regarded as a transformation of the monarchical system itself'

Whilst noblemen languished in rural penury or occupied themselves with court intrigues, the monarch held sway through the agency of his new men over a territory which, thanks not least to the acquisition of Brittany, was more unified under the Crown than ever before

So some jurists and humanists were ready to avow; and in propagating the ideology of monarchy, scholars were joined by artists who gave it visual expression through images pregnant with symbolism

On Louis XII's council nobles continued, as they had under his immediate predecessors, to rub shoulders with members of commoner extraction

Feudal independence might be long since gone; royal policy might no longer be susceptible to the dictates of magnate coalitions, as Louis d'Orleans had discovered to his cost. But royal resources and royal government remained very much the preserve of oligarchs amongst whom the nobility more than held their own

When economic recovery eventually got under way, hard on the heels of military revival under Charles VII, the conditions for reconstituting noble fortunes were not automatically restored

A notable instance is the house of La Tremoille, based mainly in western France, whose income from all sources fell by two-thirds between the end of the fourteenth century and the death of Louis XI, only to rise within two generations beyond its former level, owing not least to the efforts and system of estate-management developed by Louis II de La Tremoille, head of his house under Louis XII

Louis II de La Tremoille took care to cultivate royal favour. His distinguished service to Charles VIII in the wars of the 1480s which Louis d'Orleans helped to precipitate did not prevent his enjoying the patronage of the latter, once king

The phenomenon is obscured by the prominence in public affairs of some of Louis XII's best-known servants.

Personal secretary in due course to Louis XII, Robertet held numerous fiscal offices and married into the circle of Tours-based financiers upon whom successive monarchs relied to find them funds

and towards the 'absolutism' of the following centuries. Its formation, we are assured, was at least in some degree the achievement of Louis XII, for all that ruler's personal deficiencies and youthful waywardness

Confronted with economic difficulties, the nobles of Renaissance France rallied to the service of the Crown and were rewarded accordingly. What the kingdom experienced, in Bernard Chevalier's view, was 'not the rise of the bourgeoisie, but the triumph of the nobility'

Apanage after apanage had reverted to the Crown while, under Louis XII, the princes of the blood happened to be unusually young and the heads of other major dynasties to be preoccupied with affairs in their lands on the fringes of the kingdom

The most sensational domestic episode of Louis XII’s reign was the fall of one of his principal councillors and commanders, the notoriously grasping Marshal de Gie, accused in 1504 of crimes amounting to treason, owing in good measure to the machinations of the queen and her associates against him. Yet such incidents were exceptional

So much is evident from the legislative record of Louis XII's reign

Despite his advocacy of the role of the Estates-General under his predecessor, only once, in 1506, did Louis XII convene that assembly, and on that occasion as a device to extricate himself from a dilemma in his foreign affairs

Louis XII issued his most ambitious legislative act within his first regnal year: the ordinance of Blois on the 'justice and police' of the realm.

Shortly before his death Charles VIII had declared 'that there is no more clear and evident proof of custom than that which is made by the common agreement and consent of the Estates' of the relevant communities. Louis XII proceeded in a similar spirit, dispatching commissioners from his sovereign courts to consult with such Estates and so to record their customs in written form

The Renaissance monarchy as exemplified by Louis XII was aristocratic in its complexion, consultative in its methods and also, in a sense, popular. The reputation for benignity with which Du Moulin credited him echoed the appellation which the Estates-General of 1506 plucked from classical precedent to confer upon this monarch. Louis was the 'father of the people'; much later, the citizens of eighteenth-century Paris would remember him aw such when trying to rouse their king Louis XVI to a livelier sense of monarchical duty.

o far as the extant evidence will allow historians to judge, the average annual yield of direct taxation in his reign was significantly less than in Charles VIII's, and Iess than one half of Louis XI's demands in the early 1480s

How, then, are we to account for beliefs that Renaissance monarchy as exemplified in this reign paved the way for the authoritarianism and splendour associated with 'absolute' monarchy in the following centuries? The answer scarcely lies in the personal attributes of Louis XII

Despite – or because of – his excesses, he failed to beget a legitimate heir. His ultimate attempts to do so provoked ribaldry a good deal more overt than the rumours and suspicions that had accompanied his succession to the throne. Nine months after the death of Anne of Brittany in January 1514, Louis, in his fifty-third year, married Mary Tudor, teenage sister of Henry VIII of England

Exactly twelve weeks after his wedding, Louis XII died

But the impact of monarchy and interpretations of its nature did not depend upon the physical capabilities of its incumbent. The king had two bodies. Whatever the frailty of his body natural, his body mystical, epitome of the realm itself, existed before him and did not perish with his death

Under Louis XII, however, such propaganda reached fresh heights, with some infusion of new themes often of Italian inspiration, but above all through intensified and diversified use of traditional symbolism whereby artists and scholars cultivated portentous images of monarchy

Replete with time-honoured allusions, such images proliferated to an exceptional degree in the reign of Louis XII. They obliterated all impressions of the questionable character of Louis d'Orleans and his suspect biological antecedents. They elevated royal power to divine status. And they contributed significantly to clear the ground for the growth of the ideology of absolutism to full flower in the era of the Sun King

Henri seemed set to win the election when news of the massacre in Paris reached Poland. Overnight the atmosphere changed: lurid depictions of cruelty began to circulate

We want Henri of Valois to be our king!

The former provided for a Diet every two years, forbade the king to name his successor or to marry without its consent, limited his power over legislation and bound him to accept a permanent council of 16 senators. To safeguard religious toleration, the terms of the Confederation of Warsaw of 1573 were included in the Henrician Articles, together with a clause releasing the king’s subjects of their obligation of obedience if he broke the contract

little more than a figurehead

For Poland was far from backward culturally. A strong humanistic tradition had developed there in the 15th century

You will be powerless to do evil’, he said, ‘but all powerful to do good.

Poland as such did not interest him; he was only going there to please his mother.

Two conditions were particularly repugnant to Henri: the obligation to hand over his private fortune to the Polish state and that which released his subjects from their obedience if he should break any condition attached to his election

Henri sat as king of Poland alongside his brother, Charles IX, king of France

This meeting revealed sharp differences among the Poles over religious toleration

German Protestants had been outraged by the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day. Yet Henri was received courteously

Protestant members of the Diet feared that, once crowned, he would expel all non-Catholics from Poland

He sentenced Zborowski to banishment, thereby unleashing a furious reaction. Considered too harsh by the Zborowskis and too light by the Wapowskis, the sentence ignited bitter criticism of Henri

He was accused of breaking his oath

By now Henri was heartily tired of Poland

On June 14th, 1574, however, news of Charles IX’s death reached Henri. Keeping it to himself, he declined to take part in a tournament that evening and instead consulted four of his French councillors as to what action to take. They were equally divided: some thought a clandestine departure would do lasting damage to Henri’s reputation, while others argued that he needed to return to France urgently

Having decided to go, Henri asked two of his French courtiers to find out how to leave Cracow unnoticed and to prepare horses and guides. For it was essential that the Poles should not suspect that he was about to ditch them. If they tried to retain him he might lose the throne of France, which he valued far more than that of Poland. He was being pressed by his mother to return without delay. His brother Alençon remained a threat. On June 15th Henri deceitfully informed the Senate that he was not planning to leave for the time being and summoned a meeting of the Diet for September

In Cracow Henri’s flight was discovered. Tenczynski and a large troop of horsemen set off in pursuit. On reaching the river the chamberlain spied Henri on the far bank: ‘Your Majesty’, he cried, ‘why are you fleeing?’ He then joined Henri at Ples, a small Austrian town. ‘My friend’, explained the king, ‘while I am taking up the succession given to me by God, I am not renouncing that which He has given me by election, for my shoulders are strong enough to support both crowns

The king gave him a valuable diamond instead. Tenczynski then returned to Cracow, leaving Henri and his company to continue their journey

Discontent and confusion erupted in Poland after Henri’s flight.

the nobles turned instead to Stephen Bathory, Prince of Transylvania. He was acclaimed by a Diet on January 18th, 1576 and, soon afterwards, accepted the conditions laid down by the Polish nobles. He was crowned in Cracow on April 29th and married Princess Anna the next day

Poles felt let down. No king of theirs had ever given up his crown voluntarily. A popular saying expressed their resentment: King Henri has done the Poles a bad turn: elected at night, he came at night, and, like a traitor, he fled at night