German Empire
The German Empire known as Imperial Germany, was the German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918. It was founded in 1871 when the south German states, except for Austria, joined the North German Confederation. On 1 January 1871, the new constitution came into force that changed the name of the federal state and introduced the title of emperor for Wilhelm I, King of Prussia from the House of Hohenzollern. Berlin remained its capital, Otto von Bismarck remained Chancellor, the head of government; as these events occurred, the Prussian-led North German Confederation and its southern German allies were still engaged in the Franco-Prussian War. The German Empire consisted of 26 states, most of them ruled by royal families, they included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, one imperial territory. Although Prussia was one of several kingdoms in the realm, it contained about two thirds of Germany's population and territory.
Prussian dominance was established constitutionally. After 1850, the states of Germany had become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron and railways. In 1871, Germany had a population of 41 million people. A rural collection of states in 1815, the now united Germany became predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire was an industrial and scientific giant, gaining more Nobel Prizes in science than any other country. By 1900, Germany was the largest economy in Europe, surpassing the United Kingdom, as well as the second-largest in the world, behind only the United States. From 1867 to 1878/9, Otto von Bismarck's tenure as the first and to this day longest reigning Chancellor was marked by relative liberalism, but it became more conservative afterwards. Broad reforms and the Kulturkampf marked his period in the office. Late in Bismarck's chancellorship and in spite of his personal opposition, Germany became involved in colonialism. Claiming much of the leftover territory, yet unclaimed in the Scramble for Africa, it managed to build the third-largest colonial empire after the British and the French ones.
As a colonial state, it sometimes clashed with other European powers the British Empire. Germany became a great power, boasting a developing rail network, the world's strongest army, a fast-growing industrial base. In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britain's Royal Navy. After the removal of Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II in 1890, the Empire embarked on Weltpolitik – a bellicose new course that contributed to the outbreak of World War I. In addition, Bismarck's successors were incapable of maintaining their predecessor's complex and overlapping alliances which had kept Germany from being diplomatically isolated; this period was marked by various factors influencing the Emperor's decisions, which were perceived as contradictory or unpredictable by the public. In 1879, the German Empire consolidated the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary, followed by the Triple Alliance with Italy in 1882, it retained strong diplomatic ties to the Ottoman Empire. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, Italy left the alliance and the Ottoman Empire formally allied with Germany.
In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris in the autumn of 1914 failed. The war on the Western Front became a stalemate; the Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. However, Imperial Germany had success on the Eastern Front; the German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917, contributed to bringing the United States into the war. The high command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff controlled the country, but in October after the failed offensive in spring 1918, the German armies were in retreat, allies Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, Bulgaria had surrendered; the Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution with the abdications of its monarchs. This left a postwar federal republic and a devastated and unsatisfied populace, which led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism; the German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, after being alluded to in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris.
German nationalism shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called Pan-Germanism, to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck's pragmatic Realpolitik. Bismarck sought to extend Hohenzollern hegemony throughout the German states, he envisioned a Prussian-dominated Germany. Three wars led to military successes and helped to persuade German people to do this: the Second Schleswig War against Denmark in 1864, the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, the Franco-Prussian War against France in 1870–71; the German Confederation ended as a result of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 between the constituent Confederation entities of the Austrian Empire and its allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia and its allies on the other. The war resulted in the partial replacement of the Confederation in 1867 by a North German Confederation, comprising the 22 states north of the Main; the patriotic fervour generated by the Franco-Prussian War overwhelmed the remaining opposition to a unified Germany in the four stat
Cameroon
Cameroon the Republic of Cameroon, is a country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the north. Cameroon's coastline lies on the Bight of part of the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean. Although Cameroon is not an ECOWAS member state, it is geographically and in West Africa with the Southern Cameroons which now form her Northwest and Southwest Regions having a strong West African history; the country is sometimes identified as West African and other times as Central African due to its strategic position at the crossroads between West and Central Africa. French and English are the official languages of Cameroon; the country is referred to as "Africa in miniature" for its geological and cultural diversity. Natural features include beaches, mountains and savannas; the highest point at 4,100 metres is Mount Cameroon in the Southwest Region of the country, the largest cities in population-terms are Douala on the Wouri river, its economic capital and main seaport, Yaoundé, its political capital, Garoua.
The country is well known for its native styles of music makossa and bikutsi, for its successful national football team. Early inhabitants of the territory included the Sao civilisation around Lake Chad and the Baka hunter-gatherers in the southeastern rainforest. Portuguese explorers reached the coast in the 15th century and named the area Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English. Fulani soldiers founded the Adamawa Emirate in the north in the 19th century, various ethnic groups of the west and northwest established powerful chiefdoms and fondoms. Cameroon became a German colony in 1884 known as Kamerun. After World War I, the territory was divided between France and the United Kingdom as League of Nations mandates; the Union des Populations du Cameroun political party advocated independence, but was outlawed by France in the 1950s, leading to the Bamileke War fought between French and UPC militant forces until early 1971. In 1960, the French-administered part of Cameroon became independent as the Republic of Cameroun under President Ahmadou Ahidjo.
The southern part of British Cameroons federated with it in 1961 to form the Federal Republic of Cameroon. The federation was abandoned in 1972; the country was renamed the United Republic of Cameroon in 1972 and the Republic of Cameroon in 1984. Large numbers of Cameroonians live as subsistence farmers. Since 1982 Paul Biya has been President, governing with his Cameroon People's Democratic Movement party; the country has experienced tensions coming from the English-speaking territories. Politicians in the English-speaking regions have advocated for greater decentralisation and complete separation or independence from Cameroon. In 2017, tensions in the English-speaking territories escalated into open warfare; the territory of present-day Cameroon was first settled during the Neolithic Era. The longest continuous inhabitants are groups such as the Baka. From here, Bantu migrations into eastern and central Africa are believed to have originated about 2,000 years ago; the Sao culture arose around Lake Chad, c. 500 AD, gave way to the Kanem and its successor state, the Bornu Empire.
Kingdoms and chiefdoms arose in the west. Portuguese sailors reached the coast in 1472, they noted an abundance of the ghost shrimp Lepidophthalmus turneranus in the Wouri River and named it Rio dos Camarões, which became Cameroon in English. Over the following few centuries, European interests regularised trade with the coastal peoples, Christian missionaries pushed inland. In the early 19th century, Modibo Adama led Fulani soldiers on a jihad in the north against non-Muslim and Muslim peoples and established the Adamawa Emirate. Settled peoples who fled the Fulani caused a major redistribution of population; the Bamum tribe have a writing system, known as Shu Mom. The script was given to them by Sultan Ibrahim Njoya in 1896, is taught in Cameroon by the Bamum Scripts and Archives Project. Germany began to establish roots in Cameroon in 1868 when the Woermann Company of Hamburg built a warehouse, it was built on the estuary of the Wouri River. Gustav Nachtigal made a treaty with one of the local kings to annex the region for the German emperor.
The German Empire claimed the territory as the colony of Kamerun in 1884 and began a steady push inland. The Germans ran into resistance with the native people who did not want the Germans to establish themselves on this land. Under the influence of Germany, commercial companies were left to regulate local administrations; these concessions used forced labour of the Africans to make a profit. The labour was used on banana, palm oil, cocoa plantations, they initiated projects to improve the colony's infrastructure, relying on a harsh system of forced labour, much criticised by the other colonial powers. With the defeat of Germany in World War I, Kamerun became a League of Nations mandate territory and was split into French Cameroons and British Cameroons in 1919. France integrated the economy of Cameroon with that of France and improved the infrastructure with capital investments and skilled workers, modifying the system of forced labour; the British administered their territory from neighbouring Nigeria.
Natives complained that this made them a neglected "colony of a colony". Nigerian migrant workers flocked to Southern Cameroons, ending forced labour altogether but angering the local natives, who felt swamped. T
SMS Möwe (1879)
The SMS Möwe was a gunboat of the Imperial German Navy. Its only sister ship was the SMS Habicht, although the SMS Adler was built on the basis of the same blueprint; the Möwe was built by F. Schichau in Elbing and launched in 1879, it was deployed on service at overseas stations, most notably in German West Africa. In 1882, anti-European unrest following the British bombardment of Alexandria prompted the German government to send the Möwe and the Habicht to rescue German and Austrian nationals in Egypt, taking around 150 of them from Ismailiya to Port Said; the Möwe was the vessel which took the Imperial Commissioner for West Africa, Gustav Nachtigal, out to seek treaties of protection with local rulers in 1884. On 4 July 1884 the first such treaty was signed at Bagida on the Togo coast, which thereby became a German colony. On 14 July 1884 Nachtigal took the Möwe to Bell-town and signed a similar treaty, making Kamerun another colony of the German Empire. After this the Möwe brought the German flag to Nigeria and Angola, before taking Nachtigal south to found the new colony of German South West Africa.
In 1889 it was involved in the suppression of the Abushiri revolt in German East Africa. After 1895 it was used as a survey vessel coastal mapping German colonies in the Pacific and in German New Guinea. On 9 December 1905 the Möwe was decommissioned, it was retained as a hulk in the German territory of Qingdao on the Yellow Sea before being sold in 1910. The ship was 52.2 m long, 8.9 m breit and had a displacement of 845 tons. It was built using composite materials, with wooden planks, covered with zinc plates. Two boilers produced the required steam, a 3-cylinder engine provided 652kW of power to the 3.23m diameter propeller. It could make a top speed of 11.7 knots. With a coal stock of 100 tons and a speed of 11 knots it had an effective range of around 1230 nautical miles. There was no electrical equipment on board, it had a crew of 127. The ship was barquentine-rigged with a total sail surface of 847m², it as converted to schooner-rigging with 361m² of sail. The ship designated as an aviso, was equipped with one 15cm hoop gun and four smaller 12cm hoop guns.
This armament was replaced in 1882 by five 12.5 cm hoop guns reduced to two in 1890. Furthermore, from 1882 there were five 3.7 cm hotchkiss guns on board. The maximum ammunition stock consisted of 115 rounds of 15 cm shells and 440 rounds of 12 cm shells. After conversion, 620 rounds of 12.5 cm shells could be carried, but from 1890, storage space for only 246 shells of this caliber was provided. Erich Gröner, Dieter Jung, Martin Maass: Die deutschen Kriegsschiffe 1815–1945, Band 1. Bernard & Graefe, München 1982, ISBN 3-7637-4800-8. Hans H. Hildebrand, Albert Röhr, Hans-Otto Steinmetz: Die deutschen Kriegsschiffe Band 4, 1. Auflage, Herford 1982, ISBN 3-7822-0235-X, S. 126 ff
Central African Republic
The Central African Republic is a landlocked country in Central Africa. It is bordered by Chad to the north, Sudan to the northeast, South Sudan to the east, the Democratic Republic of the Congo to the south, the Republic of the Congo to the southwest and Cameroon to the west; the CAR covers a land area of about 620,000 square kilometres and had an estimated population of around 4.6 million as of 2016. The C. A. R. is the scene of a civil war, ongoing since 2012. Most of the CAR consists of Sudano-Guinean savannas, but the country includes a Sahelo-Sudanian zone in the north and an equatorial forest zone in the south. Two thirds of the country is within the Ubangi River basin, while the remaining third lies in the basin of the Chari, which flows into Lake Chad. What is today the Central African Republic has been inhabited for millennia. After gaining independence from France in 1960, the Central African Republic was ruled by a series of autocratic leaders, including an abortive attempt at a monarchy.
Ange-Félix Patassé became president, but was removed by General François Bozizé in the 2003 coup. The Central African Republic Bush War began in 2004 and, despite a peace treaty in 2007 and another in 2011, civil war resumed in 2012, still ongoing. Despite its significant mineral deposits and other resources, such as uranium reserves, crude oil, diamonds, cobalt and hydropower, as well as significant quantities of arable land, the Central African Republic is among the ten poorest countries in the world, with the lowest GDP per capita at purchasing power parity in the world as of 2017; as of 2015, according to the Human Development Index, the country had the lowest level of human development, ranking 188th out of 188 countries. It is estimated to be the unhealthiest country as well as the worst country in which to be young; the Central African Republic is a member of the United Nations, the African Union, the Economic Community of Central African States, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and the Non-Aligned Movement.
10,000 years ago, desertification forced hunter-gatherer societies south into the Sahel regions of northern Central Africa, where some groups settled. Farming began as part of the Neolithic Revolution. Initial farming of white yam progressed into millet and sorghum, before 3000 BC the domestication of African oil palm improved the groups' nutrition and allowed for expansion of the local populations; this Agricultural Revolution, combined with a "Fish-stew Revolution", in which fishing began to take place, the use of boats, allowed for the transportation of goods. Products were moved in ceramic pots, which are the first known examples of artistic expression from the region's inhabitants; the Bouar Megaliths in the western region of the country indicate an advanced level of habitation dating back to the late Neolithic Era. Ironworking arrived in the region around 1000 BC from both Bantu cultures in what is today Nigeria and from the Nile city of Meroë, the capital of the Kingdom of Kush. During the Bantu Migrations from about 1000 BC to AD 1000, Ubangian-speaking people spread eastward from Cameroon to Sudan, Bantu-speaking people settled in the southwestern regions of the CAR, Central Sudanic-speaking people settled along the Ubangi River in what is today Central and East CAR.
Bananas added an important source of carbohydrates to the diet. Production of copper, dried fish, textiles dominated the economic trade in the Central African region. During the 16th and 17th centuries slave traders began to raid the region as part of the expansion of the Saharan and Nile River slave routes, their captives were enslaved and shipped to the Mediterranean coast, Arabia, the Western Hemisphere, or to the slave ports and factories along the West and North Africa or South the Ubanqui and Congo rivers. In the mid 19th century, the Bobangi people became major slave traders and sold their captives to the Americas using the Ubangi river to reach the coast. During the 18th century Bandia-Nzakara peoples established the Bangassou Kingdom along the Ubangi River. In 1875, the Sudanese sultan Rabih az-Zubayr governed Upper-Oubangui, which included present-day CAR; the European invasion of Central African territory began in the late 19th century during the Scramble for Africa. Europeans the French and Belgians, arrived in the area in 1885.
France seized and colonized Ubangi-Shari territory in 1894. In 1911 at the Treaty of Fez, France ceded a nearly 300,000 km² portion of the Sangha and Lobaye basins to the German Empire which ceded a smaller area to France. After World War I France again annexed the territory. Modeled on King Leopold's Congo Free State, concessions were doled out to private companies that endeavored to strip the region's assets as and cheaply as possible before depositing a percentage of their profits into the French treasury; the concessionary companies forced local people to harvest rubber and other commodities without pay and held their families hostage until they met their quotas. Between 1890, a year after the French first arrived, 1940, the population declined by half due to diseases and exploitation by private companies. In 1920 French Equatorial Africa was established and Ubangi-Shari was
Gunboat
A gunboat is a naval watercraft designed for the express purpose of carrying one or more guns to bombard coastal targets, as opposed to those military craft designed for naval warfare, or for ferrying troops or supplies. In the age of sail, a gunboat was a small undecked vessel carrying a single smoothbore cannon in the bow, or just two or three such cannons. A gunboat could carry one or two masts or be oar-powered only, but the single-masted version of about 15 m length was most typical; some types of gunboat else mounted a number of swivel guns on the railings. The small gunboat had advantages: if it only carried a single cannon, the boat could manoeuvre in shallow or restricted areas – such as rivers or lakes – where larger ships could sail only with difficulty; the gun that such boats carried could be quite heavy. As such boats were cheap and quick to build, naval forces favoured swarm tactics: while a single hit from a frigate's broadside would destroy a gunboat, a frigate facing a large squadron of gunboats could suffer serious damage before it could manage to sink them all.
For example: in the Battle of Alvøen during the Gunboat War of 1807–1814, five Dano-Norwegian gunboats defeated the lone frigate HMS Tartar. Gunboats used in the Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain during the American Revolutionary War were built on the spot, attesting to the speed of their construction. All navies of the sailing era kept a number of gunboats on hand. Gunboats saw extensive use in the Baltic Sea during the late 18th century as they were well-suited for the extensive coastal skerries and archipelagoes of Sweden and Russia; the rivalry between Sweden and Russia in particular led to an intense expansion of gunboat fleets and the development of new gunboat types. The two countries clashed during the Russo-Swedish war of 1788–90, a conflict that culminated in the massive Battle of Svensksund in 1790, in which over 30,000 men and hundreds of gunboats and other oared craft took part; the majority of these were vessels developed from the 1770s and onwards by the naval architect Fredrik Henrik af Chapman for the Swedish archipelago fleet.
The designs and refined by the rival Danish and Russian navies, spread to the Mediterranean and to the Black Sea. Two variants occurred most commonly: a larger 20 m "gun sloop" with two 24-pounders, one in the stern and one in the bow a smaller 15 m "gun yawl" with a single 24-pounderMany of the Baltic navies kept gunboats in service well into the second half of the 19th century. British ships engaged larger 22 m Russian gunboats off Turku in southeast Finland in 1854 during the Crimean War; the Russian vessels had the distinction of being the last oared vessels of war in history to fire their guns in anger. Gunboats played a key role in Napoleon Bonaparte's plan for the invasion of England in 1804. Denmark-Norway used them in the Gunboat War. Between 1803 and 1812 the United States Navy had a policy of basing its navy on coastal gunboats, experimenting with a variety of designs. President Thomas Jefferson and his Democratic-Republican Party opposed a strong navy, regarding gunboats as adequate to defend the United States' major harbors.
They proved useless against the British blockade during the War of 1812. With the introduction of steam power in the early 19th century, the Royal Navy and other navies built considerable numbers of small vessels propelled by side paddles and by screws; these vessels retained full sailing rigs and used steam engines for auxiliary propulsion. The British Royal Navy deployed two wooden paddle-gunboats in the Lower Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River during the Rebellions of 1837 in Upper and Lower Canada; the United States Navy deployed an iron-hulled paddle gunboat, USS Michigan, to the Great Lakes in 1844. Von der Tann became the first propeller-driven gunboat in the world. Conradi shipyards in Kiel built the steam-powered 120 long tons gunboat in 1849 for the small navy of Schleswig-Holstein. Called "Gunboat No. 1", Von der Tann was the most modern ship in the navy. She participated in the First Schleswig War of 1848–1851. Britain built a large number of wooden screw-gunboats during the 1850s, some of which participated in the Crimean War, Second Opium War and Indian Mutiny.
The requirement for gunboats in the Crimean War was formulated in 1854 to allow the Royal Navy to bombard shore facilities in the Baltic. The first ships the Royal Navy built. In mid-1854 the Royal Navy ordered six Gleaner-class gunboats followed in the year by an order for 20 Dapper-class gunboats. In May 1855 the Royal Navy deployed six Dapper-class gunboats in the Sea of Azov, where they raided and destroyed stores around its coast. In June 1855 the Royal Navy reentered the Baltic with a total of 18 gunboats as part of a larger fleet; the gunboats attacked various coastal facilities, operating alongside larger British warships from which they drew supplies such as coal. Gunboats experienced a revival during the American Civil War. Union and Confederate forces converted existing passenger-carrying boats into armed sidewheel steamers; some purpose-built boats, such as USS Miami, joined the fray. They mounted 12 or more guns, sometimes of rather large caliber, carried some armor. At the same time, Britain's gunboats from the Crimean War period were starting to wear out, so a new series of classes was ordered.
Construction shifted from a purely wooden hull to an iron–teak composite. In the 19th century and early 20th century, "gunboat" w
West Africa
West Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo, as well as the United Kingdom Overseas Territory of Saint Helena and Tristan da Cunha; the population of West Africa is estimated at about 362 million people as of 2016, at 381,981,000 as of 2017, to which 189,672,000 are female, 192,309,000 male. Studies of human mitochondrial DNA suggest that all humans share common ancestors from Africa, originated in the southwestern regions near the coastal border of Namibia and Angola at the approximate coordinates 12.5° E, 17.5°S with a divergence in the migration path around 37.5°E, 22.5°N near the Red Sea. A particular haplogroup of DNA, haplogroup L2, evolved between 87,000 and 107,000 years ago or approx. 90,000 YBP. Its age and widespread distribution and diversity across the continent makes its exact origin point within Africa difficult to trace with any confidence, however an origin for several L2 groups in West or Central Africa seems with the highest diversity in West Africa.
Most of its subclades are confined to West and western-Central Africa. Because of the large numbers of West Africans enslaved in the Atlantic slave trade, most African Americans are to have mixed ancestry from different regions of western Africa; the history of West Africa can be divided into five major periods: first, its prehistory, in which the first human settlers arrived, developed agriculture, made contact with peoples to the north. Early human settlers from northern Holocene societies arrived in West Africa around 12,000 B. C. At Gobero, the Kiffian, who were hunters of tall stature, lived during the green Sahara between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago; the Tenerian, who were a more built people that hunted and herded cattle, lived during the latter part of the green Sahara 7,000 to 4,500 years ago. Sedentary farming began in, or around the fifth millennium B. C, as well as the domestication of cattle. By 1500 B. C, ironworking technology allowed an expansion of agricultural productivity, the first city-states formed.
Northern tribes developed walled settlements and non-walled settlements that numbered at 400. In the forest region, Iron Age cultures began to flourish, an inter-region trade began to appear; the desertification of the Sahara and the climatic change of the coast cause trade with upper Mediterranean peoples to be seen. The domestication of the camel allowed the development of a trans-Saharan trade with cultures across the Sahara, including Carthage and the Berbers. Local leather and gold contributed to the abundance of prosperity for many of the following empires; the development of the region's economy allowed more centralized states and civilizations to form, beginning with Dhar Tichitt that began in 1600 B. C. followed by Djenné-Djenno beginning in 300 B. C; this was succeeded by the Ghana Empire that first flourished between the 9th and 12th centuries, which gave way to the Mali Empire. In current-day Mauritania, there exist archaeological sites in the towns of Tichit and Oualata that were constructed around 2000 B.
C. and were found to have originated from the Soninke branch of the Mandé peoples, according to their tradition, originate from Aswan, Egypt. Based on the archaeology of city of Kumbi Saleh in modern-day Mauritania, the Mali empire came to dominate much of the region until its defeat by Almoravid invaders in 1052. Three great kingdoms were identified in Bilad al-Sudan by the ninth century, they included Ghana and Kanem. The Sosso Empire sought to fill the void, but was defeated by the Mandinka forces of Sundiata Keita, founder of the new Mali Empire; the Mali Empire continued to flourish for several centuries, most under Sundiata's grandnephew Musa I, before a succession of weak rulers led to its collapse under Mossi and Songhai invaders. In the 15th century, the Songhai would form a new dominant state based on Gao, in the Songhai Empire, under the leadership of Sonni Ali and Askia Mohammed. Meanwhile, south of the Sudan, strong city states arose in Igboland, such as the 10th-century Kingdom of Nri, which helped birth the arts and customs of the Igbo people, Bono in the 12th century, which culminated in the formation the all-powerful Akan Empire of Ashanti, while Ife rose to prominence around the 14th century.
Further east, Oyo arose as the dominant Yoruba state and the Aro Confederacy as a dominant Igbo state in modern-day Nigeria. The Kingdom of Nri was a West African medieval state in the present-day southeastern Nigeria and a subgroup of the Igbo people; the Kingdom of Nri was unusual in the history of world government in that its leader exercised no military power over his subjects. The kingdom existed as a sphere of religious and political influence over a third of Igboland and was administered by a priest-king called as an Eze Nri; the Eze Nri managed trade and diplomacy on behalf of the Nri people and possessed divine authority in religious matters. The Oyo Empire was a Yoruba empire of what is today Western and North c
Bremen
The City Municipality of Bremen is a Hanseatic city in northwestern Germany, which belongs to the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, a federal state of Germany. As a commercial and industrial city with a major port on the River Weser, Bremen is part of the Bremen/Oldenburg Metropolitan Region, with 2.5 million people. Bremen is eleventh in Germany. Bremen is a major economic hub in the northern regions of Germany. Bremen is home to dozens of historical galleries and museums, ranging from historical sculptures to major art museums, such as the Übersee-Museum Bremen. Bremen has a reputation as a working-class city. Bremen is home to a large number of manufacturing centers. Companies headquartered in Bremen include Vector Foiltec. Four-time German football champions Werder Bremen are based in the city. Bremen is some 60 km south of the mouth of the Weser on the North Sea. Bremen and Bremerhaven together comprise the state of the Free Hanseatic City of Bremen; the marshes and moraines near Bremen have been settled since about 12,000 BC.
Burial places and settlements in Bremen-Mahndorf and Bremen-Osterholz date back to the 7th century AD. Since the Renaissance, some scientists have believed that the entry Fabiranum or Phabiranon in Ptolemy's Fourth Map of Europe, written in AD 150, refers to Bremen, but Ptolemy gives geographic coordinates, these refer to a site northeast of the mouth of the river Visurgis. In Ptolemy's time the Chauci lived in the area now called Lower Saxony. By the end of the 3rd century, they had merged with the Saxons. During the Saxon Wars the Saxons, led by Widukind, fought against the West Germanic Franks, the founders of the Carolingian Empire, lost the war. Charlemagne, the King of the Franks, made a new law, the Lex Saxonum, which forbid the Saxons worshipping Odin. In 787 Willehad of Bremen became the first Bishop of Bremen. In 848 the archdiocese of Hamburg merged with the diocese of Bremen to become Hamburg-Bremen Archdiocese, with its seat in Bremen, in the following centuries the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen were the driving force behind the Christianisation of Northern Germany.
In 888, at the behest of Archbishop Rimbert, Kaiser Arnulf of Carinthia, the Carolingian King of East Francia, granted Bremen the rights to hold its own markets, mint its own coins and make its own customs laws. The city's first stone walls were built in 1032. Around that time trade with Norway and the northern Netherlands began to grow, thus increasing the importance of the city. In 1186 the Bremian Prince-Archbishop Hartwig of Uthlede and his bailiff in Bremen confirmed – without waiving the prince-archbishop's overlordship over the city – the Gelnhausen Privilege, by which Frederick I Barbarossa granted the city considerable privileges; the city was recognised as a political entity with its own laws. Property within the municipal boundaries could not be subjected to feudal overlordship. Property was to be inherited without feudal claims for reversion to its original owner; this privilege laid the foundation for Bremen's status of imperial immediacy. But in reality Bremen did not have complete independence from the Prince-Archbishops: there was no freedom of religion, burghers still had to pay taxes to the Prince-Archbishops.
Bremen played a double role: it participated in the Diets of the neighbouring Prince-Archbishopric of Bremen as part of the Bremian Estates and paid its share of taxes, at least when it had consented to this levy. Since the city was the major taxpayer, its consent was sought. In this way the city wielded fiscal and political power within the Prince-Archbishopric, while not allowing the Prince-Archbishopric to rule in the city against its consent. In 1260 Bremen joined the Hanseatic League. In 1350, the number of inhabitants reached 20,000. Around this time the Hansekogge became a unique product of Bremen. In 1362, representatives of Bremen rendered homage to Albert II, Prince-Archbishop of Bremen in Langwedel. In return, Albert confirmed the city's privileges and brokered a peace between the city and Gerhard III, Count of Hoya, who since 1358 had held some burghers of Bremen in captivity; the city had to bail them out. In 1365 an extra tax, levied to finance the ransom, caused an uprising among the burghers and artisans, put down by the city council after much bloodshed.
In 1366, Albert II tried to take advantage of the dispute between Bremen's city council and the guilds, whose members had expelled some city councillors from the city. When these councillors appealed to Albert II for help, many artisans and burghers regarded this as a treasonous act, fearing that this appeal to the prince would only provoke him to abolish the autonomy of the city; the fortified city maintained its own guards, not allowing soldiers of the Prince-Archbishop to enter it. The city reserved an extra narrow gate, the so-called Bishop's Needle, for all clergy, including the Prince-Archbishop; the narrowness of the gate made it physically impossible. On the night of 29 May 1366, Albert's troops, helped by some burghers, invaded the city. Afterward, the city had to a
