Aristotle taught Alexander (356–323 b.c.e.) before the prince inherited the throne of Macedon in 336 b.c.e. and began to extend the empire his father had won by conquest. Later, the garden at the Lyceum in Athens came to contain plants contributed by followers of Alexander's armies. Theophrastus based many of his plant descriptions on accounts […]

The Sudanic empires of Western Africa were a group of powerful states that developed south of the SAHARA DESERT between the A.D 700s and 1500s. The most prominent of these states were GHANA, MALI, and Songhai. The Arabs called the whole stretch of land south of the desert bilad al-sudan (“the land of the blacks”). Thus the term “Sudan” came […]

THE SPANISH EMPIRE designates the whole of territories that were conquered and ruled by SPAIN as a result of exploration and colonial expansion initiated in the 15th century. This expansion turned Spain into the first transcontinental superpower during the 16th and 17th centuries and helped shape much of the modern world. Built on military might and naval ingenuity, and maintained by trade […]

THE PERSIAN EMPIRE was one of the first of the world empires to emerge in the ancient Middle East, the first to unify several different peoples and cultures into one large heterogeneous state. Much of this work was achieved by the emperors Cyrus and Darius, who recognized the strength of diversity, picking the best of […]

THE OTTOMAN DYNASTY created the most enduring empire in human history. The Ottomans originally migrated from Central Asia as nomads and settled in the early 14th century as a military Turkic principality in western Anatolia (present-day TURKEY), between the frontier zone of the Seljuk state and the Byzantine Empire. The Ottomans emerged into a dominant […]

IN THE 15th and 16th centuries, English trading ships were already sailing to JAPAN via Africa, INDIA, and CHINA, but there was no English sovereignty in these places. The term empire then designated the association between England, Scotland, IRELAND, and Wales. During the 17th and 18th centuries, a network of territories stretching from America to […]

SINCE THE BEGINNING of history, human beings have explored the Earth. With the creation of empires, the explorations were often connected to great expeditions made to conquer new territories or to open new commercial roads. The ancient empires and their explorations include the following. EGYPT appeared as a unified state around 3300 B.C.E. About 3100 […]