Mexico

Before the extension of the railways, writes Louis C. Kleber, long cattle-drives were the way of life west of the Mississippi.

Christopher Weaver describes how one of the creators of modern Soviet Russia met a hideous death in Mexico.

Glyndwr Williams describes how, in 1743, Commodore Anson captured a galleon in the Pacific Ocean, containing more than one million pieces of eight.

Mexico declared its independence from Spanish rule on 13 September 1813.

Bertha Katzenstein traces the footsteps of early Spanish and Mexican arrivals into California.

Roger Howell discovers that the Spaniards who conquered the Americas had little real understanding of the civilizations that they overthrew.

The earliest European explorers to encounter ruins of the Maya civilisation could not believe it owed its creation to Indigenous Americans. How did they come to believe otherwise?

Hugh Latimer unearths the role of the rubber plant in the story of empire and Malayan nation-building.

Is the world going to end this week? Probably not, but just in case, here's a primer on Mayan history.

Between the fourth and the sixteenth centuries two great Mayan civilizations arose and declined in Central America.