Today in History: May 3-6
The Anglo-Mysore Wars end, Kublai Khan becomes emperor, and more
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PROGRAMMING UPDATE: As I hope you all know, I’m taking a bit of time away from the newsletter to deal with some family matters. We’ll return to our regular schedule on May 14. I hope you’re all doing well, and thanks for reading!
May 3, 1815: In a clash that offered a kind of foreshadowing of the later Battle of Waterloo, an army led by the Napoleon-installed king of Naples, Joachim Murat, is badly defeated by a smaller Austrian army at the Battle of Tolentino. Murat abandoned Naples altogether and fled to Corsica, leading to the end of the Neapolitan War and the restoration of Ferdinand I as king of Naples and Sicily.
May 3, 1978: Gary Thuerk, an employee of the Digital Equipment Corporation’s marketing department, sends a marketing email to hundreds of emails on the US Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). This was the first known instance of unsolicited bulk email, AKA “spam,” and as you might expect it drew a fairly hostile reaction from the recipients. Unfortunately, that negative response only delayed the spread of the tactic and today it is of course ubiquitous.
May 4, 1799: The British East India Company and its allies capture the fortress of Seringapatam in the southern Indian sultanate of Mysore, ending a one month siege and along with it the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War and, indeed, the Anglo-Mysore Wars as a whole. The ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, had been a perpetual thorn in the EIC’s side, having risen to the throne during the Second Anglo-Mysore War and having led the kingdom into the Third Anglo-Mysore War. He was killed at Seringapatam and his kingdom was mostly absorbed by the EIC and its allies, the Maratha Empire and Hyderabad.
May 4, 1904: The United States assumes ownership of a nearly defunct French project to build a canal across Panama connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This was just a few months after Panama’s US-backed declaration of independence from Colombia, which the Roosevelt administration encouraged because the Colombian Congress wouldn’t ratify the treaty leasing the canal zone to the US. The project was completed in 1914 and it’s fair to say it was kind of a big deal.
May 5, 1260: Kublai Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, is crowned as the fifth Great Khan (khagan) of the Mongol Empire, a position he held until his death in 1294. Perhaps best known in the West as the Khan who received the Polo family at his court in the 1270s and employed Marco Polo as an emissary for a time, Kublai is one of the most consequential figures in Mongolian and Eurasian history. Kublai’s accession contributed significantly to the ongoing disintegration of the Mongol empire, as it touched off a four year civil war between the new khagan and his brother, Ariq Böke, which in turn helped spark a war between the Ilkhanate in the Middle East and the Golden Horde Khanate in the Eurasian Steppe. That was followed by another civil war between Kublai and one of his cousins, Kaidu, that didn’t end until after Kaidu’s death in 1301. These wars weakened the cohesion of the empire, eventually rendering the title “Great Khan” essentially meaningless.
The civil wars aside, however, Kublai Khan’s achievements stand perhaps second only to his grandfather’s in Mongolian history. Kublai conquered the Southern Song Dynasty, reunifying China for the first time since at least the Jin conquest of northern China in 1115 and arguably for the first time since the fall of the Tang Dynasty in 907. In doing so, Kublai had to reconfigure the Mongolian army on the fly, managing to overcome the kinds of logistical and geographic challenges that had stalled Mongolian expansion in Europe and the Middle East. As the direct ruler of the empire’s Mongolian and Chinese territories, he shifted the imperial court from the Mongolian heartland to the Chinese city of Khanbaliq (modern Beijing) and is therefore considered the founder of China’s Yuan Dynasty.
May 5, 1862: A Mexican republican army commanded by Ignacio Zaragoza defeats a larger French force under Charles de Lorencez at the Battle of Puebla. The unexpected Mexican victory delayed a French march on Mexico City, though with reinforcements the French army eventually did take the capital and installed a Habsburg noble as the short-lived Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico. The republican side ultimately defeated the French and overthrew Maximilian in 1867, and this early, morale-boosting victory was made a Mexican national holiday: Cinco de Mayo.
May 6, 1527: A group of around 20,000 Habsburg soldiers and mercenaries, who were mutinying over not being paid, sack the city of Rome and besiege Pope Clement VII in the Castel Sant’Angelo. The city was heavily looted, and Clement was only released after agreeing to pay a ransom. Some art historians consider the sack and the devastation it entailed to mark the end of the Italian High Renaissance. It definitely marked a shift in the Catholic world. Clement and the papacy were badly weakened, and although Habsburg Emperor Charles V may have been a little embarrassed about how it happened he was happy to take advantage, and so power shifted away from the popes and toward the emperors. Among other things this meant that the Church did not pursue the Crusade against Protestantism that Clement had favored, which helped solidify the Reformation.
May 6, 1954: British runner Roger Bannister becomes the first person to verifiably run a mile in under four minutes. That’s cool. I run a three minute mile myself, but four is really nice. Bannister’s time of 3:59.4 obviously stood as the world record, but only for about six weeks before it was broken on June 21 by Australian runner John Landy’s 3:58 mile.