Empire

David Kirby discusses how Sweden's sudden rise to prominence in 17th-century Europe provoked much soul-searching both within and without the country on its nature, its culture and its destiny.

Christopher Bayly, organiser of a major new exhibition on the British and India at the National Portrait Gallery, discusses its making and the complexities of presenting the myths and realities behind the Raj.

'In my Father's house there are many mansions'... but whether or not they could accommodate Gandhi and Hindu nationalist aspirations was a question that exercised British theologians and Christian politicians between the wars. Gerald Studdert-Kennedy charts the relationship between them and the apostle of non-violence against the British Raj.

Was one of France's most formidable opponents to its expansion in North Africa secretly aided and abetted by British guns? John King looks at a tangled tale of nineteenth-century Algeria.

Aram Bakshian Jr. and Geoffrey D. Schad look at the Indian state of Hyderabad from the 18th century to the last days of the British Raj, and at its rulers who echoed the glories of the Mughal court.

'A life of action and constant fidelity to a set of ideas': Max Beloff takes a fresh look at the career of Leo Amery with the publication of the latter's second volume of diaries – a man by no means the stereotype of an inter-war Conservative politician.

Charles Boxer examines the impact of 1688 on Anglo-Dutch relationship with nations east of Suez.

The creation of the powerful propaganda image of the early medieval king as divinely-inspired and sanctioned was the work not of Charlemagne but his lesser-known grandson.

Bartholomew Dias' voyage to the Cape of Good Hope in the late 15th century marked the apex of an extraordinary Portuguese expansion overseas and the start of a fateful European impact on South Africa. 

by E.J.Hobsbawm