Ars Bellica

Maps

The great Asian empires in the early eighteenth century and the European "establishment"

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In Asia still surviving the traditional ancient empires: the Ottoman Empire, the new Persian Empire, risen with the Safavid dynasty in 1502, the Empire of the Great Mongolian, or Great Mughals in India, the Chinese Empire of the Manchus, the Empire of the Tenno in Japan. The Chinese Empire, ruled since 1644 by a foreign dynasty of the Manchus, in the eighteenth century reached its peak (red line) and extending, with its vassal states, indicated by the magenta line (Korea 1, Nepal 2, Viet 3, Burma 4), until the Indian Ocean. The Empire of the Great Mughals was already in severe crisis and eventually dissolve after 1707, when the country was formed the Confederation of Maratti. It was in this state of crisis that the various companies of the indie found a way to extend their commercial "influences": Diu and Goa for the Portuguese; the Dutch in Ceylon, the French all along the east coast, the British in Calcutta and Bombai. Here too, the Seven Years' War marked the arrest of French expansion. The French maintained only a few coastal strongholds while the British started their fortunes in India expanding in Bengal. In the rest of Asia real European colonies were formed only in the island regions in the Philippines by Spain and in Indonesia, with huge commercial success, from Holland. The expansion of Russia in Siberia, it constituted a phenomenon in many respects very different in respect of Western colonization.

The formation of the United States of America

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In the right part of the map are shown the colonies on the coast that rebelled to the motherland in 1776. Following towards west there are territory of the extension where the British government recognized the sovereignty of the new state at the end of the independence war (1783 ). The third color indicates the area generally known as Louisiana, possession of Spain by the Seven Years' War and again passed to France by the Treaty of San Ildefonso (1800). In 1803 the Americans proposed the purchase of that state to Napoleon, and the french emperor, for sixty million francs, sold most of the continent to the settlers (the biggest "deal" of American history). The fourth color indicates the territory ceded by Spain in 1819 in Florida. The fifth color indicates the territory of the "independent state of Texas", which broke away from Mexico in 1845 and asked for annexation to the Union. After this annexation, derived a war with Mexico that ended in 1848 with the transfer to the United States of all the lands to the Pacific coasts. All territories of the Far North, which were in fact an Anglo-American condominium, were delimited by the boundary along the 59th parallel, drawn on paper for about two thousand km in 1846. Another "deal" was combined in 1867, when Alaska was purchased by the US from Russia (1898, discovery of gold deposits). In the map are indicated with a red line, the states of the Confederacy that broke away in 1861 by the (Civil War). The paper also reports some feats of arms that have entered the American historical tradition: Yorktown (1781), which ended the War of Independence, the Alamo, whose garrison of American colonists were killed to the last man by the Mexicans in 1836 and the Custer Battlefield, where the "red Shadow " exterminated in 1876 the regiments of Colonel Custer. It's also indicated the track of the railway in 1869 which connected the Atlantic to the Pacific.

France and the republics "sisters" at the beginning of 1799

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The map shows as early as the beginning of the '99 French revolutionary politics themselves were increasingly taking on imperialist aspects. After the annexation of Belgium, the Rhineland, the Savoy and the Nice are, the plebiscite imposed by the provisional government of Turin also sanctioned the annexation of Piedmont. Meanwhile stood or had arisen in Italy four satellites republics: the Cisalpine Republic (1), the Ligurian Republic (2), and the Roman Republic (3), the Neapolitan Republic (4) (Independent remained only the Duchy of Parma, 5, and Tuscany). Two other satellites republics had arisen on the borders of France, the Batavian Republic (6) and the Helvetic Republic (7). The Corsica was transferred from Genoa to direct french control since 1768. Despite the losses, the austrian Empire has been extended to both the partitions of Poland and for the suppression of the Venetian Republic, democratized in May of '97 but delivered to Austria in a few months with the compromise of Campo Formio. The Kingdom of Prussia is expanded after the partition of Poland. In the two italian largest islands had fled the rulers of Turin and Naples. The Ionian Islands (8), once Venetian and now French, will eventually pass to Britain.

The Napoleonic Europe in 1812

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The french Empire stretched from the Pyrenees to the borders of Denmark, and included the whole of Italy, to Rome and the Tyrrhenian some regions over the Adriatic (the so-called Illyrian Provinces, including Ragusa). Closely dependents, and part of the "Great Empire" were the Kingdom of Italy, the Kingdom of Naples, the Swiss Confederation, the Confederation of the Rhine, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw. A close alliance was set to the Austrian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia, the Kingdom of Denmark and Norway. The map of Europe is much more straightforward. In particular, the Italian peninsula is in fact reduced to just three entities: the French provinces, the Kingdom of Italy, the Kingdom of Naples. In the map it's also indicated the track of the napoleonic expedition in Russia to Moscow, with the dramatic passage of the Berezina river: among the 610000 french soldiers that leave for Russia only 5000 came back home.