In the centuries that followed, Buddhism in Japan developed robustly. During the 7th through 9th centuries, Buddhism in China enjoyed a "golden age" and Chinese monks brought the newest developments in practice and scholarship to Japan.

Six schools of Buddhism emerged in Japan in the 7th and 8th centuries and all but two of which have disappeared. These schools flourished mostly during the Nara Period of Japanese history (709 to 795 CE). Today, they are sometimes lumped together into one category known as Nara Buddhism.

After the Nara period, five other schools of Buddhism emerged in Japan that remain prominent today. These are Tendai, Shingon, Jodo, Zen, and Nichiren.

Tendai is best known for two distinctive features. One, it considers the Lotus Sutra to be the supreme sutra and the perfect expression of the Buddha's teachings. Second, it synthesizes the teachings of other schools, resolving contradictions and finding a middle way between extremes.

Shingon is the only non-Tibetan school of Vajrayana. Many of the teachings and rituals of Shingon are esoteric, passed orally from teacher to student, and not made public. Shingon remains one of the largest schools of Buddhism in Japan.

Very simply, Pure Land emphasizes faith the Buddha Amitabha (Amida Butsu in Japanese) through which one may be reborn in the Pure Land and be nearer to Nirvana. Pure Land is sometimes called Amidism.

After some years of study at Mount Hiei and other monasteries, Nichiren believed that the Lotus Sutra contained the complete teachings of the Buddha.

Nichiren also believed fervently that all of Japan must be guided by the Lotus Sutra or lose the protection and favor of the Buddha. He condemned other schools of Buddhism, particularly Pure Land.

The Buddhist establishment became annoyed with Nichiren and sent him into a series of exiles that lasted most of the rest of his life. Even so, he gained followers, and by the time of his death, Nichiren Buddhism was firmly established in Japan.

After Nichiren, no new major schools of Buddhism developed in Japan. However, the existing schools grew, evolved, split, fused, and otherwise developed in many ways.

 Japanese Buddhist culture flourished in the 14th century and Buddhist influence was reflected in art, poetry, architecture, gardening, and the tea ceremony.

In time, this favoritism led to a partisan rivalry, which sometimes became violent.

The influence of Buddhism declined, however. Buddhism faced competition from Shinto -- the Japanese indigenous religion -- as well as Confucianism. To keep the three rivals separated, the government decreed that Buddhism would have first place in matters of religion, Confucianism would have first place in matters of morality, and Shinto would have first place in matters of state.

The Meiji Restoration in 1868 restored the power of the Emperor. In the state religion, Shinto, the emperor was worshiped as a living god.

The Emperor was not a god in Buddhism, however. This may be why the Meiji government ordered Buddhism banished

Temples were burned or destroyed, and priests and monks were forced to return to lay life.

Buddhism was too deeply ingrained in Japan's culture and history to disappear, however. Eventually, the banishment was lifted. But the Meiji government was not done with Buddhism yet.

In 1872, the Meiji government decreed that Buddhist monks and priests (but not nuns) should be free to marry if they chose to do so. Soon "temple families" became commonplace and the administration of temples and monasteries became family businesses, handed down from fathers to sons.

Today, the government of Japan recognizes more than 150 schools of Buddhism, but the major schools are still Nara (mostly Kegon), Shingon, Tendai, Jodo, Zen, and Nichiren.

In more recent years, several news stories have reported that Buddhism is dying in Japan, especially in rural areas.

For generations, the many small "family owned" temples had a monopoly on the funeral business and funerals became their chief source of income. Sons took over temples from their fathers out of duty more than vocation. When combined, these two factors made much of Japanese Buddhism into "funeral Buddhism." Many temples offer little else but funeral and memorial services.

Japanese living in urban centers are losing interest in Buddhism.

For most of their history, the monks who invented kung fu (wushu) used their martial skills mainly in self-defense; however, at certain points, they actively sought out warfare, as in the mid-16th century when they answered the central government's call for aid in the fight against Japanese pirates.

Speaking of Japan, the Japanese also have a long tradition of "warrior-monks" or yamabushi.

In 1932, for example, an unordained Buddhist preacher called Nissho Inoue hatched a plot to assassinate major liberal or westernizing political and business figures in Japan so as to restore full political power to Emperor Hirohito.

Called the "League of Blood Incident," this scheme targeted 20 people and managed to assassinate two of them before the League's members were arrested.

various Zen Buddhist organizations in Japan carried out funding drives to buy war material and even weapons.

One example is in Sri Lanka, where radical Buddhist monks formed a group called the Buddhist Power Force, or B.B.S., which provoked violence against the Hindu Tamil population of northern Sri Lanka, against Muslim immigrants, and also against moderate Buddhists who spoke up about the violence

Another very disturbing example of Buddhist monks inciting and committing violence is the situation in Myanmar (Burma), where hard-line monks have been leading the persecution of a Muslim minority group called the Rohingya.

Perhaps, if Prince Siddhartha was alive today, he would remind them that they should not nurture such an attachment to the idea of the nation.

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

By 1055, they controlled all of Persia and Iraq as far as Baghdad.

The Seljuk Empire, based in what is now Turkey, was a target of the Crusaders from western Europe.

He has been castrated at the age of six by the leader of a rival tribe, so he had no sons, but his nephew Fath Ali Shah Qajar succeeded him as Shahanshah, or "King of Kings."

Earlier in his reign, Nasser al-Din had sought to regain Persian prestige after the loss of the Caucasus by invading Afghanistan and attempting to seize the border city of Herat. The British considered this 1856 invasion a threat to the British Raj in India, and declared war on Persia, which withdrew its claim.

Also in 1907, Britain and Russia carved Persia into spheres of influence in the Anglo-Russian Agreement of 1907.

From the Turkish point of view, the Armenians were collaborating with the enemy.

Local massacres of Armenians became commonplace,

In the spring of the following year, a counter-coup made up of Islamist students and military officers broke out against the Young Turks. Because the Armenians were seen as pro-revolution, they were targeted by the counter-coup, which killed between 15,000 and 30,000 Armenians in the Adana Massacre.

the Ottoman Empire lost the First Balkan War, and as a result, lost 85% of its land in Europe. At the same time, Italy seized coastal Libya from the empire. Muslim refugees from the lost territories, many of them victims of expulsion and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, flooded into Turkey proper to the discomfort of their fellow subjects. Up to 850,000 of the refugees, fresh from abuse by Balkan Christians, were sent to Armenian-dominated regions of Anatolia. Unsurprisingly, the new neighbors did not get along well.

Embattled Turks began to view the Anatolian heartland as their last refuge from a sustained Christian onslaught.  Unfortunately, an estimated 2 million Armenians called that heartland home, as well.

Enver Pasha ordered that all Armenian men in the Ottoman armed forces be reassigned from combat to labor battalions, and that their weapons be confiscated. Once they were disarmed, in many units the conscripts were executed en masse.

The Armenians quite rightly suspected a trap, and refused to send their men out to be slaughtered, so Jevdet Bey began a month-long siege of the city.  He vowed to kill every Christian in the city. 

this Russian intervention served as a pretext for further Turkish massacres against the Armenians all across the remaining Ottoman lands.

Abdul Hamid II intentionally provoked uprisings in Armenian areas

Red Sunday incident

Tehcir Law, also known as the Temporary Act of Deportation, authorizing the arrest and deportation of the country's entire ethnic Armenian population.

These acts set the stage for the genocide that followed.

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians were forcibly marched out into the Syrian Desert and left there without food or water to die. Countless others were crammed onto cattle cars and sent on a one-way trip on the Baghdad Railway, again without supplies. Along the Turkish borders with Syria and Iraq, a series of 25 concentration camps housed starving survivors of the marches.

In some areas, the authorities didn't bother with deporting the Armenians. Villages of up to 5,000 people were massacred

The people would be packed into a building which was then set on fire.

thrown overboard to drown.

In 1919, Sultan Mehmet VI initiated courts-martial against high military officers for involving the Ottoman Empire in the First World War.

they were accused of planning the elimination of the empire's Armenian population.

The victorious Allies demanded in the Treaty of Sevres (1920) that the Ottoman Empire hand over those responsible for the massacres. Dozens of Ottoman politicians and army officers were surrendered to the Allied Powers

Centuries of humiliation and subjugation, first by the Turks, and then by the European powers that carved up the Middle East into its present configuration after World War I, rankle with traditionalists among the faithful. They look back to the Golden Age of Islam, during the Umayyad and Abbassid caliphates, when the Muslim world was the cultural and scientific center of the western world, and Europe a barbaric backwater.

ISIS, however, finds itself in a different situation than al-Qaeda did and has prioritized the creation of a new caliphate over making direct strikes on the western world. 

Conveniently for ISIS, the two modern nations that contain the former capitals of the Umayyad and Abbassid caliphates are in chaos. Iraq, once the seat of the Abbassid world, is still reeling from the Iraq War (2002 - 2011), and its Kurdish, Shi'ite, and Sunni populations threaten to splinter the country into separate states. Meanwhile, the Syrian Civil War rages in neighboring Syria, former home of the Umayyad state.

ISIS has succeeded in seizing a fairly large, contiguous area of Syria and Iraq, where it acts as the government. It imposes taxes, imposes rules on the local people according to its fundamentalist version of law, and even sells oil drilled from the land it controls.

The self-appointed caliph, formerly known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is gathering young militants to his cause with his success in seizing and holding this territory. However, the Islamic State that they are trying to create, with its stonings, beheadings, and public crucifixions of anyone who does not adhere to their exact, radical brand of Islam, does not resemble the enlightened multicultural centers that were the earlier caliphates. If anything, the Islamic State looks more like Afghanistan under Taliban rule.

The Harris Treaty of 1858 between the US and Japan further expanded U.S. rights within Japanese territory, and was even more clearly unequal than the Convention of Kanagawa. This second treaty opened five additional ports to US trading vessels, allowed U.S. citizens to live and to purchase property in any of the treaty ports, granted Americans extraterritorial rights in Japan, set very favorable import and export duties for U.S. trade, and allowed Americans to build Christian churches and worship freely in the treaty ports.

In 1860, China lost the Second Opium War to Britain and France, and was forced to ratify the Treaty of Tianjin. This treaty was quickly followed by similar unequal agreements with the US and Russia. The Tianjin provisions included the opening of a number of new treaty ports to all of the foreign powers, the opening of the Yangtze River and Chinese interior to foreign traders and missionaries, allowing foreigners to live and establish legations in the Qing capital at Beijing, and granted them all extremely favorable trade rights. 

Meanwhile, Japan was modernizing its political system and its military, revolutionizing the country in just a few short years.  It imposed the first unequal treaty of its own on Korea in 1876.  In the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1876, Japan unilaterally ended Korea's tributary relationship with Qing China, opened three Korean ports to Japanese trade, and allowed Japanese citizens extraterritorial rights in Korea. This was the first step toward Japan's outright annexation of Korea in 1910.

In 1895, Japan prevailed in the First Sino-Japanese War. This victory convinced the western powers that they would not be able to enforce their unequal treaties with the rising Asian power any longer.

The majority of China's unequal treaties lasted until the Second Sino-Japanese War, which began in 1937; the western powers abrogated most of the agreements by the end of World War II

Great Britain, however, retained Hong Kong until 1997. The British handover of the island to mainland China marked the final end of the unequal treaty system in East Asia.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Although France sought an extensive colonial empire in Asia, its defeat in the Napoleonic Wars left it with just a handful of Asian territories. Those included the 20th-century mandates of Lebanon and Syria, and more especially the key colony of French Indochina - what is now Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Some idealistic French sought not just to dominate their colonial holdings, but to create a "Greater France" in which all French subjects around the world truly would be equal. For example, the North African colony of Algeria became a depertment, or a province, of France, complete with parliamentary representation. This difference in attitude may be due to France's embrace of Enlightenment thinking, and to the French Revolution, which had broken down some of the class barriers that still ordered society in Britain.

Nonetheless, French colonizers also felt the "white man's burden" of bringing so-called civilization and Christianity to barbaric subject peoples.

On the personal level, French colonials were more apt than the British to marry local women and create a cultural fusion in their colonial societies

As time went on, social pressure increased for French colonials to preserve the "purity" of the "French race."

The Dutch competed and fought for control of the Indian Ocean trade routes and spice production with the British, through their respective East India Companies. In the end, the Netherlands lost Sri Lanka to the British, and in 1662, lost Taiwan (Formosa) to the Chinese, but retained control over most of the rich spice islands that now make up Indonesia.

For the Dutch, this colonial enterprise was all about money. There was very little pretense of cultural improvement or Christianization of the heathens - the Dutch wanted profits, plain and simple.  As a result, they showed no qualms about ruthlessly capturing locals and using them as slave labor on the plantations, or even carrying out a massacre of all the inhabitants of the Banda Islands to protect their monopoly on the nutmeg and mace trade.

Portugal became the first European power to gain sea access to Asia. Although the Portuguese were quick to explore and lay claim to various coastal parts of India, Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and China, its power faded in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the British, Dutch, and French were able to push Portugal out of most of its Asian claims.

Although Portugal was not the most intimidating European imperial power, it had the most staying power. Goa remained Portuguese until India annexed it by force in 1961; Macau was Portuguese until 1999, when the Europeans finally handed it back to China; and East Timor or Timor-Leste formally became independent only in 2002. 

Portuguese rule in Asia was by turns ruthless (as when they began capturing Chinese children to sell into slavery in Portugal), lackadaisical, and underfunded. Like the French, Portuguese colonists were not opposed to mixing with local peoples and creating creole populations. Perhaps the most important characteristic of the Portuguese imperial attitude, however, was Portugal's stubbornness and refusal to withdraw, even after the other imperial powers had closed up shop.

Portuguese imperialism was driven by a sincere desire to spread Catholicism and make tons of money. I

Any deal would most likely need the support of around a dozen Senate Democrats, since the chamber’s procedural rules require 60 votes.

“We have yet to reach an agreement on a path forward that would be acceptable for both sides,” the Democratic leader, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, said after Mr. McConnell’s remarks.

The best hope for a breakthrough appeared to reside with the group of about 20 senators from both parties who met throughout the weekend to try to hammer out a compromise to present to Mr. McConnell and Mr. Schumer.

“There are, I think, people from both parties of good will who want to have a framework for us to move forward to address all of these issues,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, said Sunday evening. “But at this point, it is in the hands of leadership

A major lingering question was how a compromise might pave the way for passage of legislation to protect the young undocumented immigrants known as Dreamers. Their status is in jeopardy after President Trump moved last year to end an Obama-era program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, that shields them from deportation. Mr. Trump gave Congress until early March to find a resolution to the issue.

For as long as the government is closed, the White House has said it will not entertain demands on immigration.

Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, said it was best for Mr. Trump to let the Senate work out its own solution. Advertisement Continue reading the main story

Mr. Trump has vacillated on an immigration deal in recent weeks, leaving both sides confused as to what kind of legislation he might accept.

Leaders from both parties quickly dismissed the idea, but Democrats wasted no time in pointing the finger back at Mr. Trump.

cultural strife and political divides eventually led to the shogunate rulership's downfall and a new imperial rule took over in 1333.

This system would endure under the leadership of different clans for almost 700 years until the Meiji Restoration of 1868.

The revolution in politics during the Kamakura Period was matched by changes in Japanese society and culture. One important change was the increasing popularity of Buddhism, which had previously been limited primarily to the elites in the emperors' court.

During the Kamakura, ordinary Japanese people began to practice new types of Buddhism, including Zen (Chan), which was imported from China in 1191, and the Nichiren Sect, founded in 1253, which emphasized the Lotus Sutra and could almost be described as "fundamentalist Buddhism."

The greatest crisis of the Kamakura Era came with a threat from overseas. In 1271, the Mongol ruler Kublai Khan  — grandson of Genghis Khan — established the Yuan Dynasty in China. After consolidating power over all of China, Kublai sent emissaries to Japan demanding tribute; the shikken's government flatly refused on behalf of the shogun and emperor.  

Kublai Khan responded by sending two massive armadas to invade Japan in 1274 and 1281. Almost unbelievably, both armadas were destroyed by typhoons, known as the "kamikaze" or "divine winds" in Japan.

They also ordered two different lines of the Japanese imperial family to alternate rulers, in an attempt to keep either branch from becoming too powerful. 

However, it wasn't until the great Mongol leader Genghis Khan formed the Mongol Empire — a vast khanate spanning much of South Asia from 1206 to 1368 — that the term was made popular to define rulers of vast empires.

The Mongol Empire went on to be the largest land mass controlled by a single empire, and Ghengis called himself and all his successors the Khagan, meaning "Khan of Khans."

Still today, the word khan is used to describe military and political leaders in the Middle East, South a

nd Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Turkey, especially in Muslim-dominated countries. Among them, Armenia has a modern form of khanate along with its neighboring countries.

However, in all of these cases, the countries of origin are the only people who might refer to their rulers as khans — the rest of the world giving them westernized titles like emperor, tsar or king. 

The Russians would have been quite happy to wrest control of India away from Britain as well.

As Britain solidified its hold on India — including what is now Myanmar, Pakistan and Bangladesh — Russia conquered Central Asian khanates and tribes on its southern borders. The front line between the two empires ended up running through Afghanistan, Tibet and Persia.

establishing a new trade route from India to Bukhara, using Turkey, Persia and Afghanistan as a buffer against Russia to prevent it from controlling any ports on the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, Russia wanted to establish a neutral zone in Afghanistan allowing for their use of crucial trade routes.

This resulted in a series of unsuccessful wars for the British to control Afghanistan, Bukhara and Turkey. The British lost at all four wars — the First Anglo-Saxon War (1838), the First Anglo-Sikh War (1843), the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848) and the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878) — resulting in Russia taking control of several Khanates including Bukhara.

The Great Game officially ended with the Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907, which divided Persia into a Russian-controlled northern zone, a nominally independent central zone, and a British-controlled southern zone.

The Convention also specified a borderline between the two empires running from the eastern point of Persia to Afghanistan and declared Afghanistan an official protectorate of Britain.

Relations between the two European powers continued to be strained until they allied against the Central Powers in World War I, though there still now exists hostility toward the two powerful nations — especially in the wake of Britain's exit from the European Union in 2017.

During the nineteenth century, Europeans and Americans gradually imposed themselves and their beliefs more and more intrusively on the ordinary people of China, particularly in the eastern coastal region.

Suddenly, rude barbarian foreigners had arrived and begun to push Chinese people around, and the Chinese government seemed unable to stop this grave affront.

In reaction, the ordinary people of China decided to organize a resistance.  They formed a spiritualist/martial arts movement, which included many mystical or magical elements such as the belief that the "Boxers" could themselves impervious to bullets.

The English name "Boxers" comes from the British lack of any word for martial artists, thus the use of the nearest English equivalent.

Initially, the Boxers lumped the Qing government in with the other foreigners who needed to be driven from China.  After all, the Qing Dynasty was not ethnically Han Chinese, but rather Manchu.

 Caught between the threatening western foreigners on the one hand, and an enraged Han Chinese populace on the other, the Empress Dowager Cixi and other Qing officials were initially unsure how to react to the Boxers.

the Qing and the Boxers came to an understanding, and Beijing ended up supporting the rebels with imperial troops.

Although the rulers and the nation survived this assault (barely), the Boxer Rebellion really signalled the beginning of the end for the Qing.  Within ten or eleven years, the dynasty would fall and China's imperial history, stretching back perhaps four thousand years, would be over.

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.

A group of European powers opposed to these developments was now working as the First Coalition, the start of seven such groups formed to fight France before the end of 1815. Austria, Prussia, Spain, Britain and the United Provinces (Netherlands)

effectively mobilizing the whole of France into the army. A new chapter in warfare had been reached, and army sizes now began to rise greatly.

Napoleon was then given a chance to pursue a dream: attack in the Middle East, even on into threatening the British in India

Britain and France were briefly at peace but soon argued, the former wielding a superior navy and great wealth.

The relationship between Napoleon and Russia began to fall apart, and Napoleon resolved to act quickly to overawe the Russian tsar and bring him to heel. To this end, Napoleon gathered what was probably the largest army ever assembled in Europe, and certainly a force too big to adequately support. Looking for a quick, dominant victory, Napoleon pursued a retreating Russian army deep into Russia, before winning the carnage that was the Battle of Borodino and then taking Moscow.

But it was a pyrrhic victory, as Moscow was set alight and Napoleon was forced to retreat through the bitter Russian winter, damaging his army and ruining the French cavalry.

With Napoleon on the back foot and obviously vulnerable, a new Sixth Coalition was organized in 1813, and pushed across Europe, advancing where Napoleon was absent, and retreating where he was present.

He was sent to the island of Elba in exile.

With time to think while exiled in Elba, Napoleon resolved to try again, and in 1815 he returned to Europe. Amassing an army as he marched to Paris, turning those sent against him to his service, Napoleon attempted to rally support by making liberal concessions. He soon found himself faced by another coalition, the Seventh of the French Revolutionary and Napoleon Wars, which included Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia.

Napoleon was defeated, retreated, and forced to abdicate once more.

The monarchy was restored in France, and the heads of Europe gathered at the Congress of Vienna to redraw the map of Europe.

Europe would not be so disrupted again until World War 1 in 1914.

The French Revolution acted as a brush which swept away a mass of local differences in France, including many of the powers who had been against codifying the laws. The result was a country in a position to (in theory) create a universal code, and a place which really needed one.

he knew that a state had to be built to support both him and a renewed France, and chief among that was to be a law code which bore his name. Attempts to write and enforce a code during the revolution had failed, and Napoleon’s achievement in forcing it through was massive. It also reflected glory back onto him: he was desperate to be seen as more than a general who took charge, but as the man who brought a peaceful end to the revolution, and establishing a legal code was a massive boost to his reputation, ego, and ability to rule. 

The Civil Code of the French People was enacted in 1804 across all the regions France then controlled: France, Belgium, Luxembourg, chunks of Germany and Italy, and was later spread further across Europe.

was supposed to be written fresh, and based on the idea that a law based on common sense and equality should replace one based on custom, societal division, and the rule of kings.

The moral justification for its existence was not that it came from God or a monarch (or in this case an emperor), but because it was rational and just.

The Napoleonic Code has been modified, but essentially remains in place in France, two centuries after Napoleon was defeated and his empire dismantled. It is one of his most lasting achievements in a country in thrall to his rule for a turbulent generation. However, it was only in the latter half of the twentieth century that laws regarding women were altered to reflect an equitable situation.

In 1877, workers in the Santo Domingo cathedral found a heavy leaden box inscribed with the words “Illustrious and distinguished male, don Cristobal Colon.” Inside was a set of human remains and everyone assumed they belonged to the legendary explorer. Columbus was returned to his resting place and the Dominicans have claimed ever since that the Spanish hauled the wrong set of bones out of the cathedral in 1795. Meanwhile, the remains sent back to Spain via Cuba were interred in an imposing tomb in the Cathedral in Seville. But which city had the real Columbus?

Columbus' remains were judged too important to fall into French hands, so they were sent to Havana. But in 1898, Spain went to war with the United States, and the remains were sent back to Spain lest they fall to the Americans.

Christopher Columbus traveled more after death than many people do in life! In 1537, his bones and those of his son Diego were sent from Spain to Santo Domingo to lie in the cathedral there. As time went on, Santo Domingo became less important to the Spanish Empire and in 1795 Spain ceded all of Hispaniola, including Santo Domingo, to France as part of a peace treaty.

The man whose remains are in the box in the Dominican Republic shows signs of advanced arthritis, an ailment from which the elderly Columbus was known to have suffered. There is, of course, the inscription on the box, which no one suspects is false. It was Columbus’ wish to be buried in the New World and he founded Santo Domingo: it’s not unreasonable to think that some Dominican passed off some other bones as those of Columbus in 1795.

The Spanish have two solid arguments. First of all, the DNA contained in the bones in Seville is an extremely close match to that of Columbus’ brother Diego, who is also buried there. The experts who did the DNA testing believe the remains are those of Christopher Columbus. The Dominican Republic has refused to authorize a DNA test of their remains. The other strong Spanish argument is the well-documented travels of the remains in question: had the lead box not been discovered in 1877, there would be no controversy.

The tourism factor alone is huge: many tourists would like to take their picture in front of Christopher Columbus’ tomb. This is probably why the Dominican Republic has refused all DNA tests: there is too much to lose and nothing to gain for a small nation that depends heavily on tourism.

The Dominicans refuse to acknowledge the DNA test done on the Spanish bones and refuse to allow one to be done on theirs: until they do, it will be impossible to know for sure.

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: