The idea of a canal linking the Mediterranean to the Rea Sea dates back to ancient times.
It was Napoleon’s engineers who, around 1800 AD, revived the idea of a shorter route
to India via the Suez Canal. It was not until 1859 that Egyptian workers started working
on the construction of Canal in conditions, described by historians, as slave labor. The
project was completed around 1867. Although Britain had played no part in building
the Suez Canal in Egypt, it benefited greatly when it opened. The new 190-km-long
waterway shortened the route from Britain to India by around 9,700 km, therby extending
their powers of trading.

In 1870, a movement calling for Home Rule was founded in Ireland. Supporters of Home
Rule wanted a separate parliament to deal with Irish affairs in Dublin. Although the
British government was force to introduce many reforms, two bills to introduce Home
Rule were defeated in parliament in the 1880s and 1980s. William Gladstone was Prime
Minister of Britain four times during the reign of Queen Victoria. He believe that the
Irish should run their own affairs and was a staunch supporter of Home Rule. But he
failed to get his Home Rule Bill approved by parliament. During World War I, the issue
of Home Rule continued to cause conflict in Ireland. The third Home Rule Bill had
been passed by the British parliament in 1914, but the outbreak of war in the same year
delayed the start. Irish protestants, however, were bitterly opposed to Home Rule. They
were in the majority in the northern province of Ulster, and believed that they would
be treated unfairly by a Dublin parliament. They formed the Ulster Volunteer Force to
protect themselves if Home Rule was introduced.

The 1860s was a time of uncertainty and political unrest in Japan. Finally, in 1868, the
situation became so serious that Emperor Mutsuhito took control from the last shogun
(military dictator). Mutsuhito became known as the Meiji emperor, and this event is
called the ‘Meiji restoration’. Under the emperor’s authority, Japan embarked on a
programmed of modernization. In 1872, a group of Japanese politicians went on a tour
of Europe and North America to learn more about industry, education and ways of life
in the West. As a result, factories were built in Japan and the country started to change
from an agricultural to an industrialized nation. This also included the establishment of
a national railway system. During the period of Meiji rule, education was introduced for
all Japanese people. The Meiji emperor also gave farmers ownership of their lands and
changed Japan’s army and navy into modern military forces.

Britain had started her collection of overseas colonies in the reign of Elizabeth I. by 1602,
both England and the Netherlands had founded an ‘East India Company’ on the Indian
coast to trade with the Far East. The first settlements in North America took root and
flourished in early Stuart times. In 1661, Britain gained her first African foothold, seizing
James Island on the Gambia River. By the middle of the 1700s, these scattered colonies
had begun to grow into a powerful and profitable empire. By the 1750s the British navy
ruled the waves. By 1763 Britain had won most of France’s territory in North America.
The map above shows the extend of the empire in 1821.

One of the biggest changes in the history of the world, the Industrial Revolution, started
in Britain was the first home of new machines, new types of materials and new ways of
making power. This was the age of coal and iron, of gas and electricity, of railways and
factories. These factories created millions of new jobs, so many people began to leave
the countryside to work in towns. Houses and factories had to be built for them, By 1850,
over 60 per cent of Britons lived, often working 14 hours a day, six days a week.

From 1492 onwards, European explores sailed across the Atlantic to what they called the
New World of North, Central and South America. There they discovered a treasure trove
of gold and silver. They also found foods that only grew in the New World, such as sweet
corn, potatoes and plants that could be made into medicines. The people that settled in the
New World were traders rather than soldiers. Their first contact with the people already
living there was friendly. The Native Americans showed the newcomers how to hunt, fish
and farm in a land of plenty. In return they were given objects such as knives, needles,
fish hooks and cloth.

We know very little about the early history of Africa. There must have been great
civilizations there, but very few of them developed writing or left any records. Some
civilization built fine communities, such as the east coast port of Kilwa or the mysterious
stone complex of Great Zimbabwe. After about AD 700, Muslims from the Near East
began to take over many coastal regions and trade routes. One of the wealthiest of
the medieval African empires was Mali. Starting in 1240, its Islamic rulers built up a
kingdom stretching for around 1,600 km over West Africa. Much of the land was desert,
but Mali grew rich from gold.

The bubonic plague (or ‘Black Death’) was a disease which brought death to most parts
of Asia, North Africa and Europe. The first outbreak was recorded in 1331 in China. The
plague started as a bloody swelling in the armpit or groin and quickly invaded the whole
body. It was highly contagious and killed millions of people. The infection probably
began on the steppes, the grassy plains of Asia. IT was carried by fleas which lived in
the fur of the rat. The rats lived closed to humans and thus the disease spread rapidly.
Corpses were left out in the road for people to collect, thus causing the disease to spread
even further.

 The youngest son of Henry II, John, inherited from his brother Richard the throne of
England, as well as the Plantagenet dominions of France, which he had lost to the French
by 1204. John’s failure to recapture these territories, his dispute with Rome over the
Pope’s choice of a new Archbishop of Canterbury, and a high level of taxation, had the
English nobility up in arms against him. In 1215 they forced the King to agree to the
Magna Carta, guaranteeing their rights in relation to those of the crown. It was intended
to protect the rights of nobles, and made sure that no-one was imprisoned without a fair
trial. Copies of this document, which tried to put an end to the king’s abuse of his power,
were distributed across the whole of England. This led to civil war, which only ended
with John’s death in 1216, Despite all these disasters, it is now known that John was
much better king than history has actually portrayed him.

The Byzantine emperor, a Christian monarch who lived in Constantinople, needed help.
He turned to the pope, who in 1095 called for all Christians to start a holy war against the
Suljuk Turks. Thousands rushed to join the Crusader armies. They crossed into Palentine
and recaptured the important cities of Nicaea and Antioch. Jerusalem fell in 1099 after a
desperate siege lasting six weeks, and the Crusaders took terrible revenge by slaughtering
thousands of Muslims. There were to be three more crusades: one in 1144, the second
in 1187 and finally the Children’s Crusade in 1212. Fifty thousand children set off from
France and Germany for the Holy Land. Many died on the journey, many more were
captured and sold as slaves in Africa.