Rabaul
Rabaul is a township in East New Britain province, on the island of New Britain, in the country of Papua New Guinea. It lies about 60 kilometres to the east of the island of New Guinea. Rabaul was the provincial capital and most important settlement in the province until it was destroyed in 1994 by falling ash of a volcanic eruption in its harbor. During the eruption, ash was sent thousands of metres into the air and the subsequent rain of ash caused 80% of the buildings in Rabaul to collapse. After the eruption the capital was moved to Kokopo, about 20 kilometres away. Rabaul is continually threatened by volcanic activity because it is on the edge of Rabaul caldera, a flooded caldera of a large pyroclastic shield. Rabaul was planned and built around the harbor area known as Simpsonhafen during the German New Guinea administration which controlled the region between 1884 and formally through 1919. From 1910 Rabaul was the headquarters of German New Guinea until captured by the British Empire during the early days of World War I.
It became the capital of the Australian mandated Territory of New Guinea until 1937 when it was first destroyed by a volcano. During World War II it was captured by Japan in 1942, became its main base of military and naval activity in the South Pacific. Settlements and military installations around the edge of the caldera are collectively called Rabaul, although the old town of Rabaul was reduced to practical insignificance by the volcanic eruption in 1937; as a tourist destination, Rabaul is popular for its volcanoes, scuba diving and for snorkeling sites, spectacular harbour and other scenery, World War II history and fauna, the cultural life of the Tolai people. Before the 1994 eruption, Rabaul was a popular commercial and recreational boating destination. Tourism is a major industry in East New Britain generally. Rabaul's proximity to its volcanoes has always been a source of concern. In 1878 before it was established as a town, an eruption formed a volcano in the harbour. For older eruptions, see Rabaul caldera.
In 1910 the German colonial government during the administration of Governor Albert Hahl moved offices, the district court, a hospital and customs and postal facilities from Herbertshöhe to Simpsonhafen. That settlement was thus enlarged with official buildings and housing and renamed Rabaul, meaning mangrove in Kuanua as the new town was built on a reclaimed mangrove swamp. At the outset of World War I, at the behest of Great Britain, Australia — as one of the Dominions of the British Empire — defeated the German military garrison in Rabaul and occupied the territory with the volunteer Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force. Following Germany's defeat at the end of the war, the occupied territory was delegated in 1920 to Australia as a League of Nations Mandate. Rabaul became the capital of the Territory of New Guinea. Visits to and stays in Rabaul during this period were amply described in books by many authors, including Margaret Mead. Gunantambu, the famous house of “Queen” Emma Forsayth and her husband, contained furniture owned by Robert Louis Stevenson and left to her family in Samoa.
Destroyed in the 1937 volcano eruption, its remains became a tourist attraction after World War II and remained so until the 1994 further volcanic destruction of Rabaul. "Rabaul volcano is one of the most active and most dangerous volcanoes in Papua New Guinea." Having erupted and destroyed Rabaul in 1937, five years before the occupation by Japan, "Rabaul exploded violently in 1994 and devastated the.... Since the young cone Tavurvur located inside the caldera has been the site of near persistent activity in form of strombolian to vulcanian ash eruptions; the caldera has an elliptical form and is surrounded by a steep volcanic ridge several hundred meters high."Under the Australian administration, Rabaul developed into a regional base. In 1937, catastrophic volcanic eruptions destroyed the town after the two volcanoes and Vulcan, exploded. 507 people were killed, there was widespread damage. Following this, the Australian administration for the Territory of New Guinea decided to move the territorial headquarters to the safer location of Lae.
All long-term steps to re-establish the territorial headquarters at Rabaul were forestalled during World War II. By the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. So, by December 1941, women and children were evacuated. In January 1942 Rabaul was bombed, on 23 January the Battle of Rabaul began and Rabaul was captured shortly thereafter by thousands of Japanese naval landing forces. During their occupation the Japanese developed Rabaul into a much more powerful base than the Australians had planned after the 1937 volcanic eruptions, with long term consequences for the town in the post-war period; the Japanese army dug many kilometres of tunnels as shelter from Allied air attacks, such as the bombing of Rabaul. They expanded the facilities by constructing army barracks and support structures. By 1943 there were about 110,000 Japanese troops based in Rabaul. On 18 April 1943, the United States executed Operation Vengeance, in which Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, was shot down and killed by a United States P-38 Lightning over south Bougainville.
Yamamoto had taken off from Rabaul on an inspection tour, United States Navy cryptographers had intercepted and decrypted Japanese communications giving h
Jiaozhou Bay
The Jiaozhou Bay is a gulf located in Qingdao, China. It was a German colonial concession from 1898 until 1914. Jiaozhou is the main town of the bay area, romanized as Kiaochow, Kiauchau or Kiao-Chau in English and Kiautschou in German. Jiaozhou Bay is a natural inlet of the Yellow Sea, with 10 to 15 meters depth to the seabed and deeper, dredged channels to three major ports around the bay: Qingdao and Hongdao, all of which are ice-free during winter, it is located on the southern coast of the Shandong Peninsula in East China, separates Huangdao District from Qingdao City and borders on Jiaozhou City. The bay is 32 km long and 27 km wide with a surface area of 362 km² two-thirds the area of 100 years ago. According to official data, the surface area has decreased from 560 km² in 1928 to 362 km² by 2003 due to sustained land reclamation activities in recent decades; the marine species have decreased by two-thirds during the last 50 years due to urban and industrial development and growth of adjacent areas around the bay.
Out of 170 species of organisms found in the northwestern part of the basin during the 1970s, only 17 were found in 1989. False killer whales still appear in the waters which were a regular range for the species until the 1980s. On the other hand, Jiaozhou Bay may serve as a suitable location for studying recoveries of coastal marine ecosystems. Jiaozhou Bay was known as Jiao'Ao; the area became known to Europeans after a lease was concluded by the German Empire in March 1898 with the Qing government of China. In 1898 the area was transferred to Germany on a 99-year lease, became known as the Kiautschou Bay concession; the village of Qingdao became the German colony of Tsingtau, the area became a focus for German commercial development in China, while for the Imperial German Navy it was the naval base for their Far East Squadron. Because of land speculation in Germany's African colonies, land value tax was introduced as the only tax in the colony, it was a great success, bringing wealth quite to the colony and financial stability.
The colony was the only government authority to rely on the single tax on land value, is used as an academic case study to this day about the viability of such a tax system. The German colony issued currency. With the outbreak of World War I, the Republic of China canceled the Kiautschou lease with the German Empire; this came into force on 23 August 1914, the day of Japan’s declaration of war on Germany, after a Japanese ultimatum for unconditional German evacuation of the colony had expired. The area was occupied subsequently by Japanese forces after the Siege of Tsingtao. China declared war on Germany on 14 August 1917; as an ally of the victors, China expected the formal return of the region at the end of hostilities. However, the Treaty of Versailles acceded to Japanese claims at the Paris Peace Conference and assigned all confiscated German Pacific territories and islands north of the equator to Japan, including Jiaozhou Bay; this arrangement caused China-wide protests known as the "May Fourth Movement", regarded as a significant event of modern Chinese history.
As a result, the Beiyang government refused to sign the Treaty. This was known as the "Shandong Problem", it was resolved following mediation by the United States which led to a return to Chinese sovereignty in February 1922. Jiaozhou Bay is situated wholly within Qingdao prefecture. Counterclockwise, the bordering divisions are Shinan District, Shibei District, Sifang District, Licang District, Chengyang District, Jiaozhou City, Jiaonan City and Huangdao District; the entrance to the bay is 6.17 km wide. In 1993, Qingdao City decided to build a traffic corridor for the Jiaozhou Bay region, which includes a tunnel under the inlet and a bridge across Jiaozhou Bay. In December 2006 the construction process started with an estimated completion target of 2011; the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge, at 42.5 kilometres, is the world's longest bridge over water, surpassing the cross-sea Donghai Bridge in length. The total budget is estimated at 9.938 billion yuan. It is estimated that it will shorten travel time from Qingdao to the outlying region by more than half and relieve pressure on the existing Jiaozhou Bay Expressway.
The Qing-Huang Tunnel will connect Qingdao with Huangdao with a length of over 7 km. After completion, travel time is estimated at 10 minutes by automobile from Qingdao to Huangdao District. German colonies Jiaozhou Bay Connection Project
Philippines
The Philippines the Republic of the Philippines, is an archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Situated in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of about 7,641 islands that are categorized broadly under three main geographical divisions from north to south: Luzon and Mindanao; the capital city of the Philippines is Manila and the most populous city is Quezon City, both part of Metro Manila. Bounded by the South China Sea on the west, the Philippine Sea on the east and the Celebes Sea on the southwest, the Philippines shares maritime borders with Taiwan to the north, Vietnam to the west, Palau to the east, Malaysia and Indonesia to the south; the Philippines' location on the Pacific Ring of Fire and close to the equator makes the Philippines prone to earthquakes and typhoons, but endows it with abundant natural resources and some of the world's greatest biodiversity. The Philippines has an area of 300,000 km2, according to the Philippines Statistical Authority and the WorldBank and, as of 2015, had a population of at least 100 million.
As of January 2018, it is the eighth-most populated country in Asia and the 12th most populated country in the world. 10 million additional Filipinos lived overseas, comprising one of the world's largest diasporas. Multiple ethnicities and cultures are found throughout the islands. In prehistoric times, Negritos were some of the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, they were followed by successive waves of Austronesian peoples. Exchanges with Malay, Indian and Chinese nations occurred. Various competing maritime states were established under the rule of datus, rajahs and lakans; the arrival of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese explorer leading a fleet for the Spanish, in Homonhon, Eastern Samar in 1521 marked the beginning of Hispanic colonization. In 1543, Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos named the archipelago Las Islas Filipinas in honor of Philip II of Spain. With the arrival of Miguel López de Legazpi from Mexico City, in 1565, the first Hispanic settlement in the archipelago was established.
The Philippines became part of the Spanish Empire for more than 300 years. This resulted in Catholicism becoming the dominant religion. During this time, Manila became the western hub of the trans-Pacific trade connecting Asia with Acapulco in the Americas using Manila galleons; as the 19th century gave way to the 20th, the Philippine Revolution followed, which spawned the short-lived First Philippine Republic, followed by the bloody Philippine–American War. The war, as well as the ensuing cholera epidemic, resulted in the deaths of thousands of combatants as well as tens of thousands of civilians. Aside from the period of Japanese occupation, the United States retained sovereignty over the islands until after World War II, when the Philippines was recognized as an independent nation. Since the unitary sovereign state has had a tumultuous experience with democracy, which included the overthrow of a dictatorship by a non-violent revolution; the Philippines is a founding member of the United Nations, World Trade Organization, Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the East Asia Summit.
It hosts the headquarters of the Asian Development Bank. The Philippines is considered to be an emerging market and a newly industrialized country, which has an economy transitioning from being based on agriculture to one based more on services and manufacturing. Along with East Timor, the Philippines is one of Southeast Asia's predominantly Christian nations; the Philippines was named in honor of King Philip II of Spain. Spanish explorer Ruy López de Villalobos, during his expedition in 1542, named the islands of Leyte and Samar Felipinas after the then-Prince of Asturias; the name Las Islas Filipinas would be used to cover all the islands of the archipelago. Before that became commonplace, other names such as Islas del Poniente and Magellan's name for the islands San Lázaro were used by the Spanish to refer to the islands; the official name of the Philippines has changed several times in the course of its history. During the Philippine Revolution, the Malolos Congress proclaimed the establishment of the República Filipina or the Philippine Republic.
From the period of the Spanish–American War and the Philippine–American War until the Commonwealth period, American colonial authorities referred to the country as the Philippine Islands, a translation of the Spanish name. Since the end of World War II, the official name of the country has been the Republic of the Philippines. Philippines has gained currency as the common name since being the name used in Article VI of the 1898 Treaty of Paris, with or without the definite article. Discovery in 2018 of stone tools and fossils of butchered animal remains in Rizal, Kalinga has pushed back evidence of early hominins in the archipelago to as early as 709,000 years. However, the metatarsal of the Callao Man, reliably dated by uranium-series dating to 67,000 years ago remains the oldest human remnant found in the archipelago to date; this distinction belonged to the Tabon Man of Palawan, carbon-dated to around 26,500 years ago. Negritos were among the archipelago's earliest inhabitants, but their first settlement in the Philippines has not been reliably dated.
There are several opposing theories regarding the origins of ancient Filipinos. F. Landa Jocano theorizes. Wilhelm Solheim's Island Origin Theory postulates that the peopling of the archipelago transpired via trade networks originating in the Sundaland area around
Gwanggaeto Stele
The Gwanggaeto Stele is a memorial stele for the tomb of King Gwanggaeto of Goguryeo, erected in 414 by his son Jangsu. It stands near the tomb of Gwanggaeto in the city of Ji'an along the Yalu River in Jilin Province, Northeast China, the capital of Goguryeo at that time, it is carved out of a single mass of granite, stands nearly 7 meters tall and has a girth of 4 meters. The inscription is written in Classical Chinese; the stele is one of the major primary sources for the history of Goguryeo, supplies invaluable historical detail on Gwanggaeto's reign as well as insights into Goguryeo mythology. It has become a focal point of national rivalries in East Asia manifested in the interpretations of the stele's inscription and the place of Goguryeo in modern historical narratives. An exact replica of the Gwanggaeto Stele stands on the grounds of War Memorial of Seoul and the rubbed copies made in 1881 and 1883 are in the custody of China and Japan; the stele's location, in Ji'an in the northeastern Chinese province of Jilin, was key to its long neglect.
Following the fall of Goguryeo in 668, to a lesser extent the fall of its successor state Balhae in 926, the region drifted outside the sway of both Chinese and Korean geopolitics. Afterwards the region came under the control of numerous Manchurian states, notably the Jurchen and from the 16th century the Manchu; when the Manchu conquered China in 1644 and established the Qing dynasty, they instituted a "closure policy" that blocked entry into a vast area in Manchuria north of the Yalu River, including the stele's site. This seclusion came to an end in the latter half of the 19th century, when the region was opened up for resettlement. In 1876, the Qing government established the Huairen County to govern the area. New settlers into the region around Ji'an began making use of the many bricks and baked tiles that could be found in the region to build new dwellings; the curious inscriptions on some of these tiles soon reached the ears of Chinese scholars and epigraphers. A few tiles were found inscribed "May the mausoleum of the Great King be secure like a mountain and firm like a peak".
It was around 1876 that a local Chinese official named Guan Yueshan, who dabbled as an amateur epigrapher, began collecting such tiles and discovered the mammoth stone stele of Gwanggaeto obscured under centuries of mud and overgrowth. The discovery soon attracted the attention Chinese and Japanese scholars, the third supplemented by Japanese spies travelling incognito to spy the region's fortifications and natural layout, prescient of a future of increased international rivalry. Only rubbings of sporadic individual letters could be made, due to the overgrowth. In order to uncover the entire inscription, the county magistrate in 1882 ordered the vegetation to be burnt off, causing damage to the stele's surface; every inch of the stele's four sides were found to be covered with Chinese characters, each about the size of a grown man's hand. But rubbed copies could not be made due to the irregular surface and other factors, so that the early batch of copied inscriptions were "tracings" rather than "rubbings".
In 1883 a young Japanese officer named Sakō Kageaki traveling disguised as a civilian kanpo herbalist while gathering intelligence in Manchuria. While in Liaoning he heard of the stele's recent discovery, traveled to Ji'an sometime during April ~ July 1883, procured a "tracing" of the stele's inscriptions to carry back to his homeland; the inscription drew significant attention from Japanese scholarship after the advent of this copy. Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office invited leading sinologists and historians to decode the text publishing their findings in Kaiyoroku 會餘録, volume 5; the first authentic rubbings of the full inscriptions were not made until 1887 according to one researcher. It was after the authentic "rubbings" became available that Chinese scholars started studying the earnest, the first scholarly paper produced by the Chinese was Wang Chih-hsiu, Kao-chü-li Yung-lo t'ai-wang ku pei k'ao, and Korea was not aware of the monument until Kaiyoroku was published in 1889. Thus, the Japanese scholars were the ones to make the first detailed analysis of the stele's ancient text.
There is some discrepancy with regards to the number of inscribed characters. Some sources state that the stele has 1,802 characters, while others say it has 1,775; the inscribed text can be grouped by content into three parts. 1) Foundation myth of the Goguryeo kingdom. The first part details the legend of the Goguryeo's founder and his lineage while the second outlined Gwanggaeto's martial accomplishments, beginning with the conquest of Paeryo in 395; the record of the king's conquest was outlined in the form of a list of the castles he occupied and the surrender of the states conquered such as Paekche's in 396. The stele identified a total of seven conquests, which were corroborated by the historical accounts found in the Samguk sagi, or the Historical Records of the Three Kingdoms; the last part contains the list of custodians called Sumyoin, who were appointed to oversee the king's tomb. The inscription thus traces lineage from the legendary founder of the kingdom to the King, memorialized by the stele.
Note: Text written in italics in brackets has been reconstructed from glyphs chipped or eroded on the stone monument. Of old, when our first Ancestor King Ch'umo laid the foundations of our state, he came forth from Northern Buyeo as the son of
Imperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 until 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender in World War II. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force was formed after the dissolution of the IJN; the Imperial Japanese Navy was the third largest navy in the world by 1920, behind the Royal Navy and the United States Navy. It was supported by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service for aircraft and airstrike operation from the fleet, it was the primary opponent of the Western Allies in the Pacific War. The origins of the Imperial Japanese Navy go back to early interactions with nations on the Asian continent, beginning in the early medieval period and reaching a peak of activity during the 16th and 17th centuries at a time of cultural exchange with European powers during the Age of Discovery. After two centuries of stagnation during the country's ensuing seclusion policy under the shōgun of the Edo period, Japan's navy was comparatively backward when the country was forced open to trade by American intervention in 1854.
This led to the Meiji Restoration. Accompanying the re-ascendance of the Emperor came a period of frantic modernization and industrialization; the navy had several successes, sometimes against much more powerful enemies such as in the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, before being destroyed in World War II. Japan has a long history of naval interaction with the Asian continent, involving transportation of troops between Korea and Japan, starting at least with the beginning of the Kofun period in the 3rd century. Following the attempts at Mongol invasions of Japan by Kubilai Khan in 1274 and 1281, Japanese wakō became active in plundering the coast of China. Japan undertook major naval building efforts in the 16th century, during the Warring States period, when feudal rulers vying for supremacy built vast coastal navies of several hundred ships. Around that time Japan may have developed one of the first ironclad warships when Oda Nobunaga, a daimyō, had six iron-covered Oatakebune made in 1576.
In 1588 Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued a ban on Wakō piracy. Japan built her first large ocean-going warships in the beginning of the 17th century, following contacts with the Western nations during the Nanban trade period. In 1613, the daimyō of Sendai, in agreement with the Tokugawa Bakufu, built Date Maru, a 500-ton galleon-type ship that transported the Japanese embassy of Hasekura Tsunenaga to the Americas, which continued to Europe. From 1604 the Bakufu commissioned about 350 Red seal ships armed and incorporating some Western technologies for Southeast Asian trade. For more than 200 years, beginning in the 1640s, the Japanese policy of seclusion forbade contacts with the outside world and prohibited the construction of ocean-going ships on pain of death. Contacts were maintained, with the Dutch through the port of Nagasaki, the Chinese through Nagasaki and the Ryukyus and Korea through intermediaries with Tsushima; the study of Western sciences, called "rangaku" through the Dutch enclave of Dejima in Nagasaki led to the transfer of knowledge related to the Western technological and scientific revolution which allowed Japan to remain aware of naval sciences, such as cartography and mechanical sciences.
Seclusion, led to loss of any naval and maritime traditions the nation possessed. Apart from Dutch trade ships no other Western vessels were allowed to enter Japanese ports. A notable exception was during the Napoleonic wars. Frictions with foreign ships, started from the beginning of the 19th century; the Nagasaki Harbour Incident involving HMS Phaeton in 1808, other subsequent incidents in the following decades, led the shogunate to enact an Edict to Repel Foreign Vessels. Western ships, which were increasing their presence around Japan due to whaling and the trade with China, began to challenge the seclusion policy; the Morrison Incident in 1837 and news of China's defeat during the Opium War led the shogunate to repeal the law to execute foreigners, instead to adopt the Order for the Provision of Firewood and Water. The shogunate began to strengthen the nation's coastal defenses. Many Japanese realized that traditional ways would not be sufficient to repel further intrusions, western knowledge was utilized through the Dutch at Dejima to reinforce Japan's capability to repel the foreigners.
Numerous attempts to open Japan ended in failure, in part to Japanese resistance, until the early 1850s. During 1853 and 1854, American warships under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry entered Edo Bay and made demonstrations of force requesting trade negotiations. After two hundred years of seclusion, the 1854 Convention of Kanagawa led to the opening of Japan to international trade and interaction; this was soon followed by treaties with other powers. As soon as Japan opened up to foreign influences, the Tokugawa shogunate recognized the vulnerability of the country from the sea and initiated an active policy of assimilation and adoption of Western naval technologies. In 1855, with Dutch assistance, the shogunate acquired its first steam warship, Kankō Maru, began using it for training, establishing a Naval Training Center at Nagasaki. Samurai such as the future Admiral Enomoto Takeaki were sent by the shogunate to study in the Netherlands for several years. In 1859 the
Baekje
Baekje was a kingdom located in southwestern Korea. It was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, together with Silla. Baekje was founded at Wiryeseong. Baekje, like Goguryeo, claimed to succeed Buyeo, a state established in present-day Manchuria around the time of Gojoseon's fall. Baekje alternately battled and allied with Goguryeo and Silla as the three kingdoms expanded control over the peninsula. At its peak in the 4th century, Baekje controlled most of the western Korean peninsula, as far north as Pyongyang, may have held territories in China, such as in Liaoxi, though this view is controversial, it became a significant regional sea power, with political and trade relations with Japan. Baekje was a great maritime power. In 660 it was defeated, by an alliance of Silla and the Chinese Tang Dynasty, submitted to Unified Silla. Baekje was founded in 18 BC by King Onjo, who led a group of people from Goguryeo south to the Han River basin. According to the Chinese Records of the Three Kingdoms, during the Samhan period, one of the chiefdoms of the Mahan confederacy was called Baekje.
The Samguk Sagi provides a detailed account of Baekje's founding. Jumong had left his son Yuri in Buyeo when he left that kingdom to establish the new kingdom of Goguryeo. Jumong became Divine King Dongmyeong, had two more sons with So Seo-no, Onjo and Biryu; when Yuri arrived in Goguryeo, Jumong promptly made him the crown prince. Realizing Yuri would become the next king, So Seo-no left Goguryeo, taking her two sons Biryu and Onjo south to found their own kingdoms with their people, along with ten vassals, she is remembered as a key figure in the founding of both Baekje. Onjo settled in Wiryeseong, called his country Sipje, while Biryu settled in Michuhol, against the vassals' advice; the salty water and marshes in Michuhol made settlement difficult, while the people of Wiryeseong lived prosperously. Biryu went to his brother Onjo, asking for the throne of Sipje; when Onjo refused, Biryu lost. In shame, Biryu committed suicide, his people moved to Wiryeseong, where King Onjo welcomed them and renamed his country Baekje.
King Onjo moved the capital from the south to the north of the Han river, south again all within present Seoul, under pressure from other Mahan states. King Gaeru is believed to have moved the capital north of the river to Bukhansanseong in 132 in present-day Goyang to the northwest of Seoul. Through the early centuries of the Common Era, sometimes called the Proto–Three Kingdoms Period, Baekje gained control over the other Mahan tribes. During the reign of King Goi, Baekje became a full-fledged kingdom, as it continued consolidating the Mahan confederacy. In 249, according to the ancient Japanese text Nihonshoki, Baekje's expansion reached the Gaya confederacy to its east, around the Nakdong River valley. Baekje is first described in Chinese records as a kingdom in 345; the first diplomatic missions from Baekje reached Japan around 367. King Geunchogo expanded Baekje's territory to the north through war against Goguryeo, while annexing the remaining Mahan societies in the south. During Geunchogo's reign, the territories of Baekje included most of the western Korean Peninsula, in 371, Baekje defeated Goguryeo at Pyongyang.
Baekje continued substantial trade with Goguryeo, adopted Chinese culture and technology. Buddhism became the official state religion in 384. Baekje became a sea power and continued mutual goodwill relationships with the Japanese rulers of the Kofun period, transmitting continental cultural influences to Japan; the Chinese writing system, advanced pottery, ceremonial burial, other aspects of culture were introduced by aristocrats, artisans and monks throughout their relationship. During this period, the Han River basin remained the heartland of the country. In the 5th century, Baekje retreated under the southward military threat of Goguryeo, in 475, the Seoul region fell to Goguryeo. Baekje's capital was located at Ungjin from 475 to 538. Isolated in mountainous terrain, the new capital was secure against the north but disconnected from the outside world, it was closer to Silla than Wiryeseong had been, a military alliance was forged between Silla and Baekje against Goguryeo. Most maps of the Three Kingdoms period show Baekje occupying the Chungcheong and Jeolla provinces, the core of the country in the Ungjin and Sabi periods.
In 538, King Seong moved the capital to Sabi, rebuilt his kingdom into a strong state. From this time, the official name of the country was Nambuyeo, a reference to Buyeo to which Baekje traced its origins; the Sabi Period witnessed the flowering of Baekje culture, alongside the growth of Buddhism. Under pressure from Goguryeo to the north and Silla to the east, Seong sought to strengthen Baekje's relationship with China; the location of Sabi, on the navigable Geum River, made contact with China much easier, both trade and diplomacy flourished during his reign and continuing on into the 7th century. In the 7th century, with the growing influence of Silla in the southern and central Korean peninsula, Baekje began its decline. In 660, the coalition troops of Silla and Tang of China attacked Ba
Piracy
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area with the goal of stealing cargo and other valuable items or properties. Those who engage in acts of piracy are called pirates; the earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilizations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Historic examples include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, the Gulf of Aden, the English Channel, whose geographic structures facilitated pirate attacks. A land-based parallel is the ambushing of travelers by bandits and brigands in highways and mountain passes. Privateering uses similar methods to piracy, but the captain acts under orders of the state authorizing the capture of merchant ships belonging to an enemy nation, making it a legitimate form of war-like activity by non-state actors.
While the term can include acts committed in the air, on land, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore, in cyberspace, as well as the fictional possibility of space piracy, this article focuses on maritime piracy. It does not include crimes committed against people traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator. Piracy or pirating is the name of a specific crime under customary international law and the name of a number of crimes under the municipal law of a number of states. In the early 21st century, seaborne piracy against transport vessels remains a significant issue in the waters between the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, off the Somali coast, in the Strait of Malacca and Singapore. Today, pirates armed with automatic weapons, such as assault rifles, machine guns and rocket propelled grenades use small motorboats to attack and board ships, a tactic that takes advantage of the small number of crew members on modern cargo vessels and transport ships, they use larger vessels, known as "mother ships", to supply the smaller motorboats.
The international community is facing many challenges in bringing modern pirates to justice, as these attacks occur in international waters. Some nations have used their naval forces to protect private ships from pirate attacks and to pursue pirates, some private vessels use armed security guards, high-pressure water cannons, or sound cannons to repel boarders, use radar to avoid potential threats; the English word "pirate" comes from the Latin term purateivitia and that from Greek πειρατής, "brigand", in turn from πειράομαι, "I attempt", from πεῖρα, "attempt, experience". The meaning of the Greek word peiratēs is "one who attacks"; the word is cognate to peril. The term first appeared in English c. 1300. Spelling did not become standardised until the eighteenth century, spellings such as "pirrot", "pyrate" and "pyrat" occurred until this period, it may be reasonable to assume that piracy has existed for as long as the oceans were plied for commerce. As early as 258 AD, the Gothic-Herulic fleet ravaged towns on the coasts of the Black Sea and Sea of Marmara.
The Aegean coast suffered similar attacks a few years later. In 264, the Goths reached Galatia and Cappadocia, Gothic pirates landed on Cyprus and Crete. In the process, the Goths took thousands into captivity. In 286 AD, Carausius, a Roman military commander of Gaulish origins, was appointed to command the Classis Britannica, given the responsibility of eliminating Frankish and Saxon pirates, raiding the coasts of Armorica and Belgic Gaul. In the Roman province of Britannia, Saint Patrick was enslaved by Irish pirates; the most known and far-reaching pirates in medieval Europe were the Vikings, seaborne warriors from Scandinavia who raided and looted between the 8th and 12th centuries, during the Viking Age in the Early Middle Ages. They raided the coasts and inland cities of all Western Europe as far as Seville, attacked by the Norse in 844. Vikings attacked the coasts of North Africa and Italy and plundered all the coasts of the Baltic Sea; some Vikings ascending the rivers of Eastern Europe as far as the Black Sea and Persia.
The lack of centralized powers all over Europe during the Middle Ages enabled pirates to attack ships and coastal areas all over the continent. In the Late Middle Ages, the Frisian pirates known as Arumer Zwarte Hoop led by Pier Gerlofs Donia and Wijerd Jelckama, fought against the troops of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V with some success. Toward the end of the 9th century, Moorish pirate havens were established along the coast of southern France and northern Italy. In 846 Moor raiders sacked the extra muros Basilicas of Saint Paul in Rome. In 911, the bishop of Narbonne was unable to return to France from Rome because the Moors from Fraxinet controlled all the passes in the Alps. Moor pirates operated out of the Balearic Islands in the 10th century. From 824 to 961 Arab pirates in the Emirate of Crete raided the entire Mediterranean. In the 14th century, raids by Moor pirates forced the Venetian Duke of Crete to ask Venice to keep its fleet on constant guard. After the Slavic invasions of the former Roman province of Dalmatia in the 5th and 6th centuries, a tribe called the Narentines revived the old Illyrian piratical habits and raided the Adriatic Sea starting in the 7th
