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William I, Prince of Orange (1533-1584), also known as William the Silent and William the Taciturn, was a wealthy nobleman from the Dutch provinces of the Spanish Netherlands. He originally served the Spanish Habsburgs, but increasing dissatisfaction with the centralisation of power away from the local estates and Spanish persecution of Dutch Protestants led William to join the Dutch revolt and becoming its main leader.<br/><br/> As leader of the uprising, William led the Dutch to several successes against the Spanish, setting off the Eighty Years' War (1568-1648). He was declared an outlaw by the Spanish king in 1580, before helping to declare the formal independence of the Dutch Republic, also known as the United Provinces, in 1581. He was eventually assassinated by Balthasar Gerard in 1584.<br/><br/> William was the founder of the House of Orange-Nassau, making him the ancestor of the present Dutch monarchy. Within the Netherlands he is also fondly remembered as the 'Father of the Fatherland'.
Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, Moorish Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I — This image is a reproduction of an Elizabethan painting of the Moorish Ambassador who visited Queen Elizabeth I of England from Barbary in 1600 to propose an alliance against Spain.
Oriental carpets more than two centuries old have rarely survived and are rarely represented in Islamic Art since Sunni Islam (and to a lesser extent Shia) eschews representational art in favour of precisely the repetetive geometric symbols and arabesques found, for example, in oriental carpets.<br/><br/> This means that most examples of 17th century and earlier oriental carpets, mainly produced in Muslim lands, are only to be found in paintings from Christian lands where rich oriental carpets were associated with wealth, power and taste.<br/><br/> Such carpets featured as an important decorative feature in paintings from the 14th century onwards, leading to the dichotomy that there are more depictions of oriental carpets produced before the 17th century in European paintings than there are actual oriental carpets surviving from the same period.<br/><br/> Because of this European paintings have proved an invaluable source of reference for the study of the history of carpetmaking and carpets.
Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603) was Queen regnant of England and Queen regnant of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty. Elizabeth I's foreign policy with regard to Asia, Africa and Latin America demonstrated a new understanding of the role of England as a maritime, Protestant power in an increasingly global economy. Her reign saw major innovations in exploration, colonization and the use of England's growing maritime power.
Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, Moorish Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I — This image is a reproduction of an Elizabethan painting of the Moorish Ambassador who visited Queen Elizabeth I of England from Barbary in 1600 to propose an alliance against Spain.
John Eldred sailed with Newberry and other merchants in 1583 on a royal decreed voyage to the Middle East to initiate trade in spices. Eldred remained in Basra while others continued to Persia and India. Six months later, Eldred left Basra with 70 barges laden with spices, mainly nutmeg and cinnamon. After 44 days they arrived in Baghdad where they joined a caravan of 4,000 camels that took 40 days to transport the merchandise to Aleppo in Syria. He remained in Aleppo for three years and when he left he was a wealthy man. He retired to the country in Suffolk buying a large manor which he named ‘Nutmeg Hall’. When the East India Company was established in 1600, Eldred became a major sponsor and financier.
After A Dutch spy, Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, copied Portuguese nautical maps while working as secretary for the Portuguese Archbishop of Goa in the 1580s, his published maps and books enabled the maritime passage to the elusive East Indies to be opened to the English and the Dutch. This allowed the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company to break the 16th century monopoly enjoyed by the Portuguese on trade with the East Indies (Indonesia) and the Spice Islands (Moluccas), though not without a great deal of bloodshed. The Portuguese East India Company lost its stranglehold on East Indies’ trade and commerce, and was liquidated in 1633.
The East India Company, which became the British East India Company after the 1707 Treaty of Union, was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China. The Company was granted an English Royal Charter by Queen Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600. After a rival English company challenged its monopoly in the late 17th century, the two companies were merged in 1708 to form the Honourable East India Company (HEIC), colloquially referred to as John Company.<br/><br/> The East India Company traded mainly in cotton, silk, indigo dye, saltpetre, tea and opium. The Company also came to rule large areas of India, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions, to the exclusion, gradually, of its commercial pursuits; it effectively functioned as a megacorporation. Company rule in India, which effectively began in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey, lasted until 1858, when, following the events of the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British Crown assumed direct administration of India in the new British Raj. The Company itself was finally dissolved on 1 January 1874, as a result of the East India Stock Dividend Redemption Act.