Southeast Asia

During the second half of the seventeenth century, writes Robert Bruce, France hoped to dominate Siam and convert its sovereign to the Christian faith.

Helen Bruce describes how, in Buddhist countries, for the last six hundred years, the albino elephant has always received special veneration.

George Woodcock describes how Malacca was once a city so rich that “its merchants valued garlic more highly than gold,” and how it has slowly dwindled in wealth and importance since the middle of the seventeenth century.

British missions to the Chinese Court had already run into many grievous difficulties. When a mission was despatched to Burma, writes Mildred Archer, they found their problems no less irksome.

‘Whoever is Lord in Malacca, has his hand on the throat of Venice’, wrote a European traveller during the period of the city's greatest glory. G.P. Dartford brings us back to a time when Malacca dominated the trade routes of the East.

From 1565 until the year of Waterloo, great Spanish galleons continued to cross the Pacific, bearing cargoes of American silver. ‘This prodigious voyage’ took a heavy toll of life. Yet still (wrote a Chronicler) ‘the desire of gain prevails...’

C.R. Boxer describes how the Dutch East-India Company gave unity to the islands of Indonesia much as the English East-India Company laid the foundations of the British Raj—often unwittingly and by a series of gradual steps.

During the Seven Years' War with France and Spain, writes A.P. Thornton, a British expedition from India captured and held the Philippine capital.

K.G. Tregonning traces the path of Mongol conquest to a lesser studied destination - the ancient kingdoms of the Indo-Chinese and Malayan peninsulas.

New documentary throws down a gauntlet to a tired genre.