The West Indies is home to a large and vibrant South Asian population descended from indentured labourers who worked the plantations after the abolition of slavery. The arrival of the first, from Bengal in 1838, is recorded in the journal of a young doctor who accompanied them, as Brigid Wells describes.
The Allies may be regarded as the 'good guys' of the Second World War, but the hypocrisy apparent in their treatment of colonial peoples drove many subjects into the arms of their enemies, as Mihir Bose explains.
Marking the 250th anniversary of General Wolfe’s victory over the French at Quebec, Jeremy Black considers the strategy employed by British forces in their struggle to gain and hold Canada.
Troops under the command of Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer killed hundreds of unarmed demonstrators on 13 April 1919.
In 1947, as Zionist insurgents wreaked havoc, British special forces in Palestine adopted counterinsurgency tactics that attracted worldwide condemnation. David Cesarani discusses a scandal whose ramifications persist to this day.
With a solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians as far away as ever, James Barker looks back to Britain’s occupation of the region and the efforts made by the future Viscount Montgomery to impose peace on its warring peoples.
Spain and Portugal divided almost all of South America between them, but in the 16th century the French also had commercial and colonial ambitions in Brazil. Robert Knecht tells the stories of two French expeditions that ended in disaster.
To understand why Americans believe their nation to be innocent of imperialism we must go back to the Founding Fathers of the Republic, says Graham MacPhee.
James Barker reveals how parsimony and muddle in Whitehall in the first years of the British Mandate in Palestine almost led to disaster in August 1929.
