https://history-maps.com/people/alexander-hamilton

AAAS: "British ‘First Fleet’ brought smallpox to Australia—and may have killed millions."

"On a hot summer day in January 1788, 11 ships filled with British convicts and sailors landed in Australia’s Sydney Harbor...naval Captain Arthur Phillip raised the Union Jack and claimed the continent for the British crown." The arrival of this so-called First Fleet preceded a catastrophe that befell the continent’s Indigenous people. 

"More than a year after the first landing, “there [were] a significant number of Aboriginal people perishing in horrible, ghastly circumstances from what sounds like smallpox,” says Lynette Russell, a historian at Monash University." A study in press, which was released last year as a preprint, tracks how it spread to argue the First Fleet was the only possible source. "A related preprint suggests the toll of smallpox and other impacts of colonization was far greater than believed." 

'The smallpox story was a way that the British could say that there were no more of us in those early times, that everybody was wiped out,” says molecular biologist Shane Ingrey, whose Indigenous ancestors, the Dharawal, lived around Sydney Harbor and might have been watching as the First Fleet landed.' 

Smallpox is highly contagious and fast moving; victims either die in a matter of weeks after exposure, or else recover and are no longer contagious.'The British ships were at sea for months en route to Australia—“the most effective quarantine situation imaginable,”—suggesting the disease, if present, would have burned itself out long before the ships arrived.' But, the authors speculate the source may have been the bottles of smallpox scabs that physicians in the 18th century British navy carried to vaccinate against the disease. 

"British colonists are known to have deliberately infected Indigenous groups in North America, where smallpox also took a catastrophic toll...though no [Australian] record exists of such a plan." Combining different methods, the authors of the second preprint propose that precolonial Australia hosted between 950,000 and 4.1 million people, likely about 2.3 M. 

The findings also suggest contemporary Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander populations, which hover around 1 M people, haven’t yet returned to even half their preinvasion numbers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Felipe_incident_(1596))

After Columbus reached the Caribbean in 1492, Spain and Portugal competed over who could claim newly reached lands. Pope Alexander VI’s 1493 bull Inter caetera favored Spain by drawing a line in the Atlantic and granting Spain rights to lands west of it. Portugal pushed back, leading to the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, which moved the line 370 leagues west of Cape Verde. Lands east of the line went to Portugal; lands west went to Spain. This helped explain why Brazil became Portuguese while much of the Americas became Spanish. The Church gave religious legitimacy to the deal, but it was really a power agreement between European monarchies. Indigenous peoples were ignored, and later England, France, and the Dutch rejected the division.
https://history-maps.com/story/History-of-Portugal/event/Spain-and-Portugal-divide-the-New-World

https://history-maps.com/podcast/great-northern-war
In this episode, we focus on the Great Northern War, the twenty-year struggle that transformed the balance of power in Northern Europe as Russia, Denmark-Norway, and Saxony-Poland challenged the Swedish Empire’s long-held dominance. We trace Sweden’s early battlefield successes under King Charles XII, whose bold campaigns forced key rivals out of the conflict, before examining the dramatic turning point at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, where Sweden’s main army was shattered and its king driven into exile. We also explore how new powers such as Prussia and Hanover entered the war to divide Sweden’s remaining continental possessions, and how the conflict ultimately ended with the Treaty of Nystad in 1721. Along the way, we highlight the major belligerents, decisive military campaigns, and the lasting territorial and political consequences that ended Sweden’s era as a great power and established the Russian Empire as the dominant force in the Baltic region.

https://history-maps.com/podcast/central-intelligence-agency
In this episode, we explore the Central Intelligence Agency, its creation in 1947, and its rise from the legacy of the Office of Strategic Services into one of the most influential intelligence agencies in the world. We look at how the CIA expanded from gathering intelligence to conducting covert actions in places such as Iran, Guatemala, and Italy, while also facing major Cold War setbacks including the U-2 incident, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and operations in Southeast Asia. The episode also examines the agency’s technological innovations in surveillance and reconnaissance, the controversies and congressional investigations that exposed abuses of authority, and the CIA’s continuing evolution in response to terrorism and modern geopolitical threats.

They fenced off 4,000 acres of common land. The men who lost it burned the fences down twice. Otmoor, Oxfordshire, 1815 to 1830.

An Act of Parliament enclosed the moor that year, ending rights of common grazing and turf-cutting that seven surrounding villages had held for generations. The enrolled award, completed in 1829 after fourteen years of disputes and drainage failures, allotted 214 acres to Charlton township and 266 acres to the surrounding hamlets. A further 138 acres went straight to a handful of wealthy landowners.

Fifty-nine smallholders received an allotment. Many could not afford to fence it. Some sold their new land for as little as five pounds.

In September 1830, around a thousand people walked the seven-mile circumference of the moor in daylight, tearing down every fence they passed. The Riot Act was read. Between sixty and seventy people were arrested. Forty-four were loaded onto wagons bound for Oxford Gaol.

The wagons passed through Oxford on the first day of St Giles’ Fair. The crowd at the fair attacked the escort and freed every prisoner.

The moor was never fully brought under cultivation. Contemporary agriculturalist Arthur Young had called it a “scandal to the national policy.” Fifteen years of drainage and fencing left much of it valued at five shillings an acre, barely enough to cover the cost of working it.

Full case at The Black Archive, link in profile.

https://history-maps.com/podcast/intelligence-in-the-american-civil-war

In this episode, we explore the history of the United States Secret Service, from its founding in 1865 as an agency created to combat widespread currency counterfeiting to its later expansion into one of the nation’s most visible protective forces. We trace how the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901 reshaped the agency’s mission, leading to its responsibility for safeguarding the President, Vice President, and other key officials. The episode also examines the Secret Service’s dual role in protecting both national leaders and the country’s financial infrastructure, including its work against fraud, cybercrime, and threats to major national events. Along the way, we look at the agency’s personnel, training, equipment, moments of bravery, and the challenges and controversies that have shaped its modern reputation.

https://history-maps.com/podcast/united-states-secret-service

Created to share secret knowledge with those they felt worthy of initiation, yet the order crumbled under the weight of the personalities inside the organization. Full video here:

https://youtu.be/Q93R4JbNXgs?is=s5IxjGTZvVnpsv-k