West Indies: Did you mean...?

The Council of the Indies (El Real y Supremo Consejo de las Indias) operated from 1524 to 1834 and was the supreme governing body of the Spanish Empire in the Americas and Spanish East Indies. Reporting directly to the monarch, the Council...

A map illustrating the changing balance of colonial power among the Spanish, English, and French Empires in the 1700s along the coastlines of the Americas, specifically in the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico. This region, referred to...

The Kingdom of West Francia (843-987 CE, also known as The Kingdom of the West Franks) was the region of Western Europe that formed the western part of the Carolingian Empire of Charlemagne (Holy Roman Emperor 800-814 CE) known as Francia...

The apparatus of colonial government in the Spanish Empire consisted of multiple levels, starting with the monarchy and Council of the Indies at the top and moving down to the viceroy, audiencias, mayors, and local councils. The system was...

Odo of West Francia (also known as Eudes, l. c. 856-898 CE, r. 888-898 CE) was Count of Paris and hero of the Viking Siege of Paris 885-886 CE who was shortly afterwards elected King of West Francia. He was the son of Robert The Strong (c.830-866...

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. (Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right). When it comes to religion, many people...

A Swiss plantation in the Dutch East Indies bought in 1881 by Karl Krüsi (1855–1925) and named after Mary, his wife. In 1893, he sold it for a fortune and built the Villa Sumatra Zurich’s Sumatrastrasse. Manager House in Deli, Karl Krüsi...

West Africa was one of the world's greatest producers of gold in the Middle Ages. Trade in the metal went back to antiquity but when the camel caravans of the Sahara linked North Africa to the savannah interior, the trade really took off...

A map illustrating one of the most significant processes of the early modern period - the rise and decline of Spain between the late fifteenth and the late seventeenth centuries. From a patchwork of kingdoms in the north of the Iberian peninsula...

Salt from the Sahara desert was one of the major trade goods of ancient West Africa where very little naturally occurring deposits of the mineral could be found. Transported via camel caravans and by boat along such rivers as the Niger and...