Empire

Golden Goa 1510-1954

For 444 years Goa has been ruled by the Portuguese; today their rule is challenged by the Republic of India. By C.R. Boxer.

Raffles of Java, 1781-1826

Administrator, Orientalist, patron of science and founder of Singapore, Raffles was an enlightened Governor of Java during the British occupation, 1811-1816.

Gibraltar, 1704-1954

Gibraltar provides one of the examples of how the British Empire was 'acquired in a fit of absence of mind'. 

Amritsar, 1919

Few incidents in the British rule of India have given rise to more acute controversy than Dyer's drastic action at Amritsar on April 13th, 1919.

Russia in California

The Russians were the first Europeans to sense California's potential, George Edinger writes, and had they not sold their settlement there in 1841, seven years before the Gold Rush, the world could have been a different place a century later.

A Chinese Poet in Central Asia

Ts’ên Shên was one of the celebrated poets of the T’ang dynasty. Here, Arthur Waley explores his body of work and the tumultuous career that propelled it.

The War of American Independence Reconsidered

Only a staff composed of men of military genius, and backed by a decisive and imaginative government at Westminster, could have secured a victory in the American War of Independence. Eric Robson reflects on how men of considerable talent, and of much good-will, failed in an impossible task.