The Emperor has given a very liberal education to his fortunate and noble children, who, by virtue of his attention and care, have reached to the summit of perfection, and made great advances in rectitude, devotion, and piety, and in learning the manners and customs of princes and great men.

When it was reported to His Majesty Aurangzeb, that in the reign of his father every year a sum of seventy-nine thousand rupees was distributed through the Sadru-es-Sudúr amongst the poor during five months of the year,

During the last ten days of the month, he performs worship in the mosque, and although, on account of several obstacles, he is unable to proceed on a pilgrimage to Mecca, yet the care which he takes to promote facilities for pilgrims to that holy place may be considered equivalent to the pilgrimage.

He keeps the appointed fasts on Fridays and other sacred days, and he reads the Friday prayers in the Jámi’ masjid with the common people of the Muhammadan faith.

Much of the failure of the Mughal Empire is attributed to Aurangzeb’s leadership, which according to his critics, was intolerant, one-dimensionally fundamentalist (in the sense of his devotion to Islam), and uncompromising.

That the chamber of Amsterdam shall consist of twenty managers; the chamber of Zealand of twelve; the chambers of Maeze and of the North Part, each of fourteen, and the chamber of Friesland, with the city and country, also of fourteen managers; if it shall hereafter appear, that this work cannot be carried on without a greater number of persons; in that case, more may be added, with the knowledge of nineteen, and our approbation, but not otherwise.

The Charter of the Dutch West India Company is a valuable historical document because it allows us to see how early modern trading powers like the Netherlands helped invent the mercantile system of commercial and state power.

The Dutch created the first modern commercial bank (the Bank of Amsterdam) in 1609 and the first modern securities market (the Amsterdam Stock Exchange) in 1602.

growth in world population

Part of this political system entailed the brutal suppression of Christianity, the expulsion of all Europeans from Japan save for a handful of Dutch, and a prohibition on all Japanese travel abroad. These “closed country edicts” would remain in force until the coming of the Americans with the mission of Matthew Perry in 1853 — 1854.

Japan also saw the rise of a powerful military and political entity in the seventeenth century.

Sugar required a great deal of labor to be grown and processed profitably.

savages

The Qing established a relatively limited system of trade known as the “Canton system,” in which Europeans were allowed only a fixed period every year in which to trade and in which all trade had to be conducted with a licensed group of merchants known as the Cohong

Despite the pomp and circumstance of the embassy, the Chinese ultimately rejected the British request, stating emphatically that the Chinese were not in need of any British commercial goods and that the British, if they wanted to trade in China, must follow the existing rules

And the rest of the people for the most part cure themselves with herbs and sticks and other ancient methods, so that they live putting all their faith in these herbs and ceremonies, and die believing that they are saved; and this serves God poorly.

And we cannot reckon how great the damage is, since every day the mentioned merchants are taking our people, sons of the land and the sons of our noblemen and vassals and our relatives, because the thieves and men of bad conscience grab them so as to have the things and wares of this kingdom that they crave; they grab them and bring them to be sold.

And that, sir, arises from the great negligence of your highness’s officials toward us and toward shipping us those things. …

Each ending of a cycle meant great tensions and possible changes in the universe and could mean the end of the Aztec people as a nation — or even the end of humanity.

Although the Mexica, as the Aztecs originally called themselves,

This is the Hymn which they sang every eight years when they fasted on bread and water.

In many cases gods are interchanged with their human representatives, who function on earth.

In order to appease the gods, the Aztecs built monumental temples, where they committed sacrifices; like most Mesoamerican gods, the Aztec gods fed on human blood.

Many of the Aztec written codices were labeled as works of the devil and destroyed. Between 1540 and 1585 a Spanish priest, Bernardino de Sahagún, worked closely with educated Aztecs and compiled twelve books of information about their culture.

It is referred to as the culture of the Olmecs,

The Rig Veda Americanus is a collection of hymns addressing the pantheon of Aztec gods and presenting a small fraction of their mythology