The political history of Mysore and Coorg (1565–1760) is the political history of the contiguous historical regions of Mysore state and Coorg province in west-central peninsular India, beginning with the fall of the Vijayanagara Empire in 1565 and ending just before the rise of Sultan Haidar Ali in 1761. After the Vijayanagara Empire's fall, the Sultanate of Bijapur, the Sultanate of Golconda, the fledgling Maratha empire, and the Mughal empire, invaded the region intermittently. By the turn of the eighteenth century, the northwestern hills were being ruled by the Nayaka rulers of Ikkeri, the southwestern, in the Western Ghats, by the Rajas of Coorg, the southern plains by the Wodeyar rulers of Mysore, Hindu dynasties all; whereas the eastern and northeastern regions had fallen to the Muslim Nawabs of Arcot and Sira. Mysore's expansions had been based on unstable alliances. When the alliances began to unravel, political decay set in. The declining Mughal empire raided the Mysore capital, Seringapatam, to collect unpaid taxes; the neighbouring Raja of Coorg began a war of attrition with Mysore over western territory; and soon, the Maratha empire invaded again and exacted more concessions of territory. In the chaotic last decade of this period, a little-known Muslim cavalryman, Haidar Ali, seized power in Mysore. Read the rest of this article: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_history_of_Mysore_and_Coorg_%281565%E2%80%931760%29> _______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries: 1306: Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scotland at Scone near Perth. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_I_of_Scotland> 1409: The Council of Pisa, an unrecognized ecumenical conference of the Roman Catholic Church held in Pisa that attempted to end the Western Schism, opened. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Pisa> 1634: Lord Baltimore, his younger brother Leonard Calvert, and a group of Catholic settlers founded the English colony of Maryland. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Province_of_Maryland> 1655: Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan , the largest natural satellite of the planet Saturn. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_%28moon%29> 1802: France and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty of Amiens, temporarily ending the hostilities between the two during the French Revolutionary Wars. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Amiens> 1807: The Slave Trade Act became law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_Trade_Act_1807> _____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day: double act (n): A comic pairing in which humor is derived from the uneven relationship between two partners, usually of the same gender, age, ethnic origin and profession, but often with drastically different personalities or behavior <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/double_act> ___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day: Freedom is the very essence of life, the impelling force in all intellectual and social development, the creator of every new outlook for the future of mankind. The liberation of man from economic exploitation and from intellectual and political oppression, which finds its finest expression in the world-philosophy of Anarchism, is the first prerequisite for the evolution of a higher social culture and a new humanity. --Rudolf Rocker <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rudolf_Rocker>