Most recently I have been doing a review of modern history, and connecting more specific and smaller nations to it. I have also done a similar review of the 16th century. For the specific periods of the 16th century, I have not progressed much beyond the Ottoman Empire and Egypt. Although European exploration of the world was progressing, I don’t yet have details of specific nations. I have been doing more with connecting peoples to cities, and areas of social mechanics, and particularly to Abrahamic religion.

I started this one in the early 2nd millennium BC, and I have worked so far up to early medieval history. Going this far back has put new emphasis on Persian peoples as a division of Middle Eastern peoples, and on Balkan peoples in Western Civilization. Persia proper, or Iran, will start to get better connected: I don’t yet have specifics much further back than the 1979 Iranian revolution, but this will definitely fill out some big gaps in Middle Eastern history. I have long been wanting to get Latin peoples back as far as the Roman empire, and that’s finally happening. Getting more of Germanic peoples back through medieval times will also be helpful.

By the time I get to the early 21st century, I now have enough nations and enough information on the government leaders in this period that it is difficult to get a clear picture of what has been going on. This is more comprehensible when I break it down into 5-year periods. Such things as the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in the George W. Bush administration, and the current leadership of Spain, Germany, and Egypt are beginning to appear. I am presently working on year-by-year accounts for the last 10 years, although these don’t have a lot of detail yet.

After another pass through history, I have an outline of the Ottoman empire from the beginning; at least the names of the Sultans. Tying this to the Seljuq Turks and the Byzantine empire of the late medieval period will take another pass. This has connections to Persian peoples, which are also not yet well developed. Egypt was at least nominally under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. I don’t yet have details of Western Civilization, although these are starting to develop. In particular, Balkan peoples were more prominent and important in early modern times than they became in the 20th century.