Empire

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.

The Russians were among the first Europeans to sense California's potential. Had they not sold their settlement there in 1841, the world could have been a different place.

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.

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.

Tim Pat Coogan points the finger of blame for the Great Famine at ministers in Lord Russell’s government, which came to power in 1846, and sees echoes of the disaster in the Republic’s current economic plight.

The ill-fated fortress was opened on February 14th 1938.

The diffusion of wild flowers, thousands of miles from their native places, is a “vegetable record” Geoffrey Grigson suggests, of human migration and colonization.

James Kinross tells the story of the French Foreign Legion, a force famous for fighting in Africa, Russia, Mexico, Indo-China and France itself, as well as across the world.

J.H. Plumb documents the repeated attempts by British explorers and abolitionists to open West Africa for the Empire.

Eric Robson looks at the constitutional background - and legacies - of the American Revolution.