Brief History of the World Wiki

From the early beginnings of civilisation to contemporary times, the **Brief History of the World Wiki** offers a magisterial sweep through time and history. Although Eurocentric terms like the "Middle Ages" are used, it is intended as "world" history. Such artificial historical divisions are still useful to help keep the past manageable; after-all it really is just the one long narrative, drifting seamlessly from one brief form to the next.

 * History of Rome Podcast
* 12 Byzantine Rulers Podcast
* Norman Centuries
* History of the Crusades Podcast
* Crash Course Youtube Channel
* History World

The causes of the **collapse of the Western Roman Empire** in 476 AD were complex. There were in truth a synergy of interacting political, economic, military, and social tensions. After the Constantinian Dynasty (324-363 AD), the east-west division of the empire became permanent. Both the Eastern and Western Empire endured a similar series of often inept emperors, but other tensions were felt disproportionately in the West. Once a lasting peace was established with Sassanid Persia in 387 AD, the Eastern Empire enjoyed a huge economic territory, well shielded from intruders. Her economy in turn allowed the bureaucracy to fair much better as a route for the advancement of capable men. Of course, the ultimate trigger for the collapse of the Western Empire was the rise of the Huns, both because of the invasions of Attila and the displacement of other Germanic tribes. The West could not simply buy-off the barbarians with tribute, as the East often did. For all these challenges, perhaps the social factors were ultimately crucial. One genius of the Roman Empire was its ability to incorporate new peoples into her ethnically diverse empire. This was until it came to the Germanic peoples. In her declining years, almost all the most capable Roman leaders were of Germanic descent, yet were consistently denied access to political power, unlike the provincial Illyria emperors who had dragged Rome out of the Crisis of the 3rd-Century. Some historians have also pointed to Christianity as another divisive force, with the Church pursuing the persecution of pagans with the same zeal with which they had once been persecuted themselves, at a time when the empire needed unity. In 476 AD, the last western emperor Romulus Augustulus was overthrown by a Germanic general, who sent the imperial regalia to the eastern emperor, signifying there was no further need for a western emperor.

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**Sugar** cane is native to the South Paciﬁc, and was taken to India in ancient times, where farmers learned to turn cane juice into granules that could be stored and shipped easily. It then went to China and the Mediterranean, where Egypt, Crete, Sicily, and Cyprus had the right kind of warm, wet climate for growing sugar. The Caribbean Islands off the coast of America also had this kind of climate, and shortly after they were discovered by Europeans, sugar growing and processing began here. By 1600, consumption in England was several pounds per person per year, still tiny compared with modern sugar consumption; as much as 150 pounds a year. Sugar may not be physically addictive, but the human demand for sugar seems insatiable, as long as the price is low enough. The African Slave Trade kept the price of sugar low.

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Athens, the first known democratic state in the world, has long been held up as our idealisation of democracy, the ancestors of the British House of Commons, the American Congress, and parliaments around the world. Yet Athenian democracy could also have its dark-side, the terrifying potential to descend into mob-rule and turn on any citizen, even its greatest philosopher. **Socrates** was one of the leaders of a revolution, a revolution in thinking that had been gathering strength across the Greek world. His passion was applying reason and logic to the study people, to question the society he lived in, and to arrive at political and ethical truths. He was the first fanatically urban individual. For Socrates, Athens was a classroom and he spending his days talking and debating with anyone he met, and gathering around him a group of young students, including Plato. What was paramount for Socrates was that every decision must be made based on thinking for yourself. Yet, Socrates lived in troubled times, in the wake of the death of the great statesman Pericles, when self-interested demagogues vied for power, and in the midst of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC) against Sparta and her allies. When the war ended in humiliation and defeat in 404 BC, the Athenians searched for someone to take the blame, they searched for Socrates. He was arrested on charges of corrupting the youth of the city, by questioning Athenian traditions. In his trial, Socrates defiantly defended the ideals by which he had lived his life, and when he was sentenced to death it could hardly have been a surprise. He died in his cell by self-administered poison hemlock. But the accounts of his final days would become some of the most famous Greek writings, and through them he showed his fellow citizens that the principles of reason, of questioning the world, were something worth dying for.

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