India

When India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain in 1947, the region’s Princely States – including tiny Sikkim – became pawns in South Asia’s great power politics, as Andrew Duff explains.

The civilisation that arose in the Indus valley around 5,000 years ago was only discovered in the early 20th century. Andrew Robinson looks at what we know about this extraordinary culture.

The contribution of Indian troops to one of the first major battles on the Western Front. 

The people of Brighton offered a warm welcome to the Indian soldiers sent to convalesce at the Sussex resort in the First World War. But the military authorities found much to be nervous about.

Ironically, from his lofty, paternal point of view, Lord Curzon became one of the prime architects of Indian independence.

From the fifteenth century until the present day, under both British and Indian rulers, write George Woodcock, the Sikhs of the Punjab have made their distinctive contribution to Hindu civilization.

C.R. Boxer describes how the cultivated Viceroy of Portuguese India, on his way home from Goa, had a costly misadventure in the Indian Ocean.

Rosamond Harcourt-Smith follows an eastern route to India during the early years of viceregal rule.

From the 1830s until the end of British rule, Simla was the summer capital of successive Governors-General and Viceroys.

William Seymour describes how independence for India in 1947 put an end to the long and close association of the Indian princes with British power.