Word: roman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Empires were a powerful force for obliterating natural and demographic barriers and forging connections among far-flung parts of the world. The British left their system of civil service in India, Kenya and Guyana, while the Spaniards, Portuguese and French spread Roman Catholicism to almost every continent...
...friends was typical of Arkansas clannishness. The state's white population is homogeneous and inbred. The base of its stable demographics was an influx of native-born Protestants from nearby states in the 19th century. It still has few foreign-born citizens -- or Jews (0.1% of the population) or Roman Catholics (3.1%, about a ninth of the national average). It is a Bible-reading and conservative state that passed one of the last creationism laws to teach an alternative to evolution...
Power abhors a vacuum. At the close of the 7th century A.D., Iberia had almost become one. Its central administrative order, that of the Roman Empire, had long since dissolved. Over it, Visigothic laws and Christian rites had been superimposed. But as a political entity, Iberia was on the verge of collapse. Thus when the Arabs looked across the Mediterranean, they saw a vast territory spotted with squabbling factions -- Christians, Jews, Visigoths -- separated from Africa by a small strait and ripe for conquest. In 711 a mixed force of Arabs and Berbers under the command of Musa ibn Nusayr crossed...
...Arab women with them; they intermarried with Iberian ones. The conquering power became an indigenous one in short order, although the successive caliphs tended to retain a nostalgia for Baghdad. Out of the Moorish conquest grew the first unified culture Spain had seen since the collapse of the Roman Empire. It lasted until 1492, when Catholic armies, under Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, drove the last vestiges of Arab power back to North Africa. If you want to grasp why Spain, traditionally, is unique in Europe, you must begin with the fact that no other European country...
...have always struggled with foreign languages. Some part of me just doesn't get it. I figured the perfect language class at Harvard for me would have several key elements: a Roman alphabet, easy grammar rules and a classroom free of students who already knew the language and just couldn't pass the requirement...