Ancient & Medieval

After the fall of the tyrant Hippias, rival aristocrat Isagoras allied with the Spartan king Cleomenes and expelled the reformer C...

Reforming tribunes Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were killed by senators for proposing land redistribution, normalizing political mu...

Charles of Anjou had ruled Sicily harshly since 1266, taxing the island heavily to fund his ambitions against Byzantium. On Easter...

The Black Death, English chevauchees during the Hundred Years War, and crushing taxes to fund the ransom of King John II pushed ru...

The Florentine wool industry depended on thousands of carders, spinners, and dyers who were excluded from the major guilds that mo...

The Black Death had made labor scarce, but the Statute of Labourers capped wages while landlords revived feudal dues. Three poll t...

The Greek cities on the coast of Asia Minor had been ruled by tyrants backed by the Achaemenid Persian Empire. Encouraged by Arist...

The Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes outlawed key Jewish practices and rededicated the Temple in Jerusalem to Zeus. The priest...

Famine, land concentration, and court corruption had impoverished the Chinese peasantry. Zhang Jue led the Way of Supreme Peace, a...

Many non-Arab Muslims, known as mawali, resented their unequal status under the Umayyads, and many Muslims looked for leadership f...

Floods of the Yellow River, famine, and heavy labor demands for river works fueled discontent with Yuan rule. Members of millenari...

Jan Hus, a Prague preacher who criticized church corruption, was burned at the stake at the Council of Constance in 1415. His foll...