Day: January 21, 2015

(A) European Colonisation: Dutch Colonisation: Dutch East India Company (VOC) traders, under the command of Jan van Riebeeck, were the first people to establish a European colony in South Africa. The Cape settlement was built by them in 1652 (a century and a half after the discovery of the Cape Sea Route) as a re-supply […]

Political Changes in Eastern Europe 1989-2001: Part I With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the political landscape of the Eastern Bloc, and indeed the world, changed. In the German reunification, the Federal Republic of Germany peacefully absorbed the German Democratic Republic in 1990. In 1991, COMECON, the Warsaw Pact, and the Soviet […]

Imperialism and Colonialism: Australia In 1770, Captain James Cook of Great Britain had sailed to Australia, landing only at Botany Bay (as named by him). He claimed the coastline for the British crown, but it was another 18 years before any attempt was made to site a colony there. selfstudyhistory.com Australia was chosen for settlement, […]

Disintegration of Soviet Union and the Rise of the Unipolar World: Factors leading to the collapse of Soviet communism and the Soviet Union, 1985-1991; End of the cold war and US ascendancy in the World as the lone superpower: Part III Factors contributing to the emergence of a unipolar world Unipolarity is used to describe […]