Empire

Bernard Porter is unconvinced by American denials of a new imperialism and finds comparisons – as well as important differences – with the British experience.

David Anderson looks at the contentious issues raised as Kenya comes to terms with the colonial past.

Richard L. Pflederer visits the site of the first short-lived English colony in Maine set up in competition with Jamestown in Virginia, and considers a remarkable map of it drawn by one of the colonists.

Howard Amos interrogates a key text on colonialism and assesses its influence.

T.A. Jenkins reviews the life and legacy of Benjamin Disraeli, statesman, novelist and man-about-town, on the bicentenary of his birth.

Bernard Porter argues that, through most of the nineteenth century, most Britons knew little and cared less about the spread of the Empire.

Geoff Quilley shows how the work of Hodges, official artist on Cook’s second voyage and subject of a major exhibition opening this month at the National Maritime Museum, sheds light on perceptions of the British Empire.

Richard Cavendish describes the French defeat in Indochina, on May 7th, 1954.

Charles Freeman offers a new theory to explain the positioning in Venice of the famous horses looted from Constantinople eight hundred years ago this month.

Damian O’Connor examines the motives of the man who started the conflict.