Utopia, you are standing in it!

David Ricardo:

Under a system of perfectly free commerce, each country naturally devotes its capital and labour to such employments as are most beneficial to each. This pursuit of individual advantage is admirably connected with the universal good of the whole… It is this principle which determines that wine shall be made in France and Portugal, that corn shall be grown in America and Poland, and that hardware and other goods shall be manufactured in England…

If Portugal had no commercial connexion with other countries, instead of employing a great part of her capital and industry in the production of wines, with which she purchases for her own use the cloth and hardware of other countries, she would be obliged to devote a part of that capital to the manufacture of those commodities, which she would thus obtain probably inferior in quality as well as quantity.

The quantity of…

Ivan IV Vasilyevich (August 25, 1530 – March 28, 1584), commonly known in English as Ivan the Terrible, “Ivan the Formidable” or “Ivan the Fearsome” was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547 and the first Moscow ruler to be crownedTsar of all Russia from 1547 to 1584.

Ivan was the first Moscow ruler born after its independence.

Early life

Ivan was the first son of Grand Prince Vasili III of Moscow and his second wife, Elena Glinskaya, Elena was born in 1510 as the daughter of Prince Vasili Lvovich Glinsky (d. 1515), a member of a Lipka Tatar clan claiming descent from the Mongol ruler Mamai, and Serbian Princess Ana Jakšić from the Jakšić noble family.

Elena’s mother was a Serbian princess and her father’s family, the Glinski clan (nobles based in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania), claimed descent both from Orthodox Hungarian nobles and the Mongol…

We have reached an interesting point in this series. Although, as we shall see, the House of Stuart will have its difficult times on and off the thrones of England and Scotland, we have reached a period of relative stability as far as legal successions are concerned. There will be a few more crises for the throne but we will not see civil wars and usurpations like we have had in the past. In the next section of this topic we will see the rise of Parliament and the battle with the Crown over the power within the government. I will examine how this conflict actually helped stabilize the Crown and the succession to the throne.

James I-VI, King of England and King of Scots (when still only King of Scots) married Princess Anne of Denmark in 1589, the daughter of King Frederik II of Denmark and Norway and his wife…

Charles I (November 19, 1600 – January 30, 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. He was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark and King Frederik II of Denmark and Norway and Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow.

James VI was the first cousin twice removed of Queen Elizabeth I of England and Ireland, and when she died childless in March of 1603, he became King of England and Ireland as James I. Charles was a weak and sickly infant, and while his parents and older siblings left for England in April and early June that year, due to his fragile health, he remained in Scotland with his father’s friend Lord Fyvie, appointed as his guardian.

By 1604, when Charles was three-and-a-half, he was able to walk the length…