In the year 43, Vietnam came under the rule of the Chinese Han dynasty. This foreign domination was to last for hundreds of years, with the Chinese campaigning to “civilize” and assimilate the native people.

Though the Chinese ruled Vietnam for hundreds of years, their rule was not accepted by the Vietnamese and there were many organized rebellions over the years.

Pronunciation

The name Triệu Thị Trinh has a few sounds that don’t exist in English (plus Vietnamese is a tonal language). You could probably get pretty close by pronouncing it as “Tria Tea Trin”.

One of these rebellions was led by a legendary Vietnamese hero known as Triệu Thị Trinh.

Trieu Thi Trinh, also called Lady Trieu (Bà Triệu) or Triệu Ẩu (趙嫗), was born in a small … Read More »

Queen Nzinga Mbande was a ruthless and powerful 17th century African ruler of the Ndongo and Matamba Kingdoms (modern-day Angola). Nzinga fearlessly and cleverly fought for the freedom and stature of her kingdoms against the Portuguese, who were colonizing the area at the time.

Around the turn of the 17th century, the independent kingdoms and states of the Central African coast were threatened by Portuguese attempts to colonize Luanda. (Luanda, today the capital of Angola, was founded in 1576.) Portugal sought to colonize the region in order to control the trade in African slaves, and attacked many of their old trading partners to further this goal.

Unlike many other rulers at the time, Nzinga was able to adapt to these changing circumstances and fluctuations in power around her. By … Read More »

Image by GflaiG on Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Sayyida al Hurra was a 16th-century pirate queen. Though Islamic records of the time are strangely silent about her, she was a powerful force of the time and an equal ally of the famous pirate Barbarossa. Her real name is unknown; the title Sayyida al Hurra means “noble lady who is free and independent; the woman sovereign who bows to no superior authority.”

Sayyida was from the Kingdom of Granada, the last Muslim-ruled state in Spain at the end of the Reconquista (the centuries-long retaking of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors). Her family fled to Morroco after the fall of Granada in 1492.

The city of Tétouan in northern Morroco which Sayyida ruled was first settled … Read More »

Mandukhai Khatun (1449-1510), also known as Mandukhai Sechen Khatun, was a Mongolian Empress. The word “Khatun” is the female form of the word “Khan”, as in Genghis Kahn.

Born into a family of aristocrats, she married Manduul Khan when she was 18 years old, and bore a daughter, whose name unfortunately isn’t known.

Soon after the death of her husband the Khan, Manduhai adopted the 7-year-old orphan Batmunkh, then the last living direct descendant of Genghis Kahn. Manduhai named him “Dayan Kahn”, meaning “Great Kahn” or “Khan of whole universe”.

When Dayan Khan turned 19, Manduhai married him, again becoming the Khatun or Empress. Older and more experienced than the Khan, she retained great influence over court and military. Together they reunified the Mongol retainers of the former eastern region of the … Read More »