Plot
Keywords: tv-mini-series
The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration and the Great Navigations, was a period in history starting in the early 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century during which Europeans engaged in intensive exploration of the world, establishing direct contact with Africa, the Americas, Asia and Oceania and mapping the planet. Historians often refer to the 'Age of Discovery' as the pioneer Portuguese and Spanish long-distance maritime travels in search of alternative trade routes to "the Indies", moved by the trade of gold, silver and spices.
The Age of Discovery can be seen as a bridge between the Middle Ages and the Modern era, along with its contemporary Renaissance movement, triggering the early modern period and the rise of European nation-states. Accounts from distant lands and maps spread with the help of the new printing press fed the rise of humanism and worldly curiosity, ushering in a new age of scientific and intellectual inquiry. European overseas expansion led to the rise of colonial empires, with the contact between the Old and New Worlds producing the Columbian Exchange: a wide transfer of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and culture between the Eastern and Western hemispheres, in one of the most significant global events concerning ecology, agriculture, and culture in history. European exploration allowed the global mapping of the world, resulting in a new world-view and distant civilizations acknowledging each other, reaching the most remote boundaries much later.
Zheng He (1371–1433; simplified Chinese: 郑和; traditional Chinese: 鄭和; pinyin: Zhèng Hé), also known as Ma Sanbao (simplified Chinese: 马三宝; traditional Chinese: 馬三寶) and Hajji Mahmud Shamsuddin (Arabic: حاجي محمود شمس الدين) was a Hui-Chinese mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who commanded voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa, and the Horn of Africa collectively referred to as the Voyages of Zheng He or Voyages of Cheng Ho from 1405 to 1433.
Zheng, born as Ma He (馬和 / 马和), was the second son of a Muslim family which also had four daughters, from Kunyang, present day Jinning, just south of Kunming near the southwest corner of Lake Dian in Yunnan.
He was the great great great grandson of Sayyid Ajjal Shams al-Din Omar, a Persian who served in the administration of the Mongolian Empire and was appointed governor of Yunnan during the early Yuan Dynasty. Both his grandfather and great-grandfather carried the title of Hajji, which indicates they had made the pilgrimage to Mecca. His great-grandfather was named Bayan and may have been a member of a Mongol garrison in Yunnan.
Howard Lindsay Goodall CBE (born 26 May 1958) is a British composer of musicals, choral music and music for television. He also presents music-based programming for television and radio, for which he has won many awards. In May 2008 he was named as a presenter and Composer-in-Residence with the UK radio channel Classic FM, and in May 2009 he was named "Composer of the Year" at the Classical BRIT Awards.
Born in Bromley, Kent and educated at New College School, Oxford, Stowe School and Lord Williams's School Thame, he read music at Christ Church, Oxford. He is married to Val Fancourt, who is a classical music agent.
His output of musical theatre works includes The Hired Man (1984), an adaptation of the novel by Melvyn Bragg, which won an Ivor Novello award (1985) and TMA Award(2006) award for Best Musical, Girlfriends (1986), Days of Hope (1991), Silas Marner (1993), The Kissing-Dance (1998),The Dreaming (2001) (both with Charles Hart), A Winter's Tale (2005) and Two Cities (2006). Goodall worked on original music for a new production called 'King Cotton', a co-commissioned stage show by The Lowry and the Liverpool Culture Company. However, he amicably withdrew from the production weeks before the opening for reasons unknown, and "any offers for Goodall's unused music will be gratefully received", according to the 16 September 2007 Sunday Times (page 14). A Winter’s Tale was presented during 2009–10 by Youth Music Theatre: UK, while 2010 saw the premiere at the Minerva Theatre, Chichester of Love Story, based on the novella by Erich Segal. The production opens in London's West End (Duchess Theatre) in November 2010. In 2010 there was also a new professional production of The Hired Man produced by The Octagon Theatre, Bolton which played from 3 June to 4 July 2010.
Juan Bautista Valentín Alvarado y Vallejo (February 14, 1809 – July 13, 1882) was a Californio and twice Governor of Alta California from 1836 to 1837, and 1838 to 1842.
Alvarado was born in Monterey, Alta California, to Jose Francisco Alvarado and María Josefa Vallejo. His grandfather Juan Bautista Alvarado accompanied Gaspar de Portolà as an enlisted man in the Spanish Army in 1769. His father died a few months after his birth and his mother remarried three years later, leaving Juan Bautista in the care of his grandparents, the Vallejo family. He and Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo grew up together in the Vallejo household. They were both taught by William Edward Petty Hartnell, an English merchant living in Monterey.
In 1827 the eighteen-year-old Alvarado was hired as secretary to the territorial legislature. In 1829 he was briefly arrested along with Vallejo and another friend, José Castro, by soldiers involved in the military revolt led by Joaquín Solis. In 1831 he built a house in Monterey for his mistress, Juliana Francisca Ramona y Castillo, whom he called “Raymunda”, to live in. Over the years, the pair had a total of five illegitimate daughters, all of whom he recognized, but he never married their mother. During this period Alvarado began drinking heavily. One of his daughters claimed that Raymunda had refused to marry Alvarado because of his excessive drinking.
Christopher Columbus (before 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in what is today northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents. Those voyages, and his efforts to establish permanent settlements in the island of Hispaniola, initiated the process of Spanish colonization, which foreshadowed the general European colonization of what became known as the "New World".
In the context of emerging western imperialism and economic competition between European kingdoms seeking wealth through the establishment of trade routes and colonies, Columbus's speculative proposal to reach the East Indies by sailing westward received the support of the Spanish crown, which saw in it a promise, however remote, of gaining the upper hand over rival powers in the contest for the lucrative spice trade with Asia. During his first voyage in 1492, instead of reaching Japan as he had intended, Columbus landed in the Bahamas archipelago, at a locale he named San Salvador. Over the course of three more voyages, Columbus visited the Greater and Lesser Antilles, as well as the Caribbean coast of Venezuela and Central America, claiming them for the Spanish Empire.