Empire

Fifty years before the great struggle with the Japanese on the frontiers of India, writes Antony Brett-James, Manipur in 1891 was the scene of a gallant Victorian action.

Having lost hope of invading the British Isles, in 1797 the French Directory made a bold attempt to cut off their enemy's East-Indian trade routes. The agent they chose was Napoleon Bonaparte, a brilliant young general, D.G. Chandler writes, already fascinated by the Eastern scene.

Reputed to be a place of enormous wealth and during the seventeenth century known as “the golden isle”, Madagascar, before it achieved its independence, was long the subject of contention between French and British empire-builders.

Michael Langley introduces the prophet of free colonisation in Australasia.

The inward movement of European peoples and the southward migration of Bantu tribes supply the key to South African history and, write Edna and Frank Bradlow, to the problems that confront the country today.

The Battle of Majuba Hill during the First Boer War, had immense political and military significance to British arms—and not only in South Africa. Its chief cause, writes Brian Bond, was a gross underestimation of the Boer’s tactical aptitude and courage.

British Malaya since 1786 has become the home of many different races, whose harmonious union, writes C. Northcote Parkinson, would offer an example from which the rest of the world might profit.

For 80 years the Braganza dynasty guided the destiny of Brazil. How did Dom Pedro I and his successor come to reign in a continent of republicans?

Crevecoeur fought under Montcalm at Quebec in 1759 and, writes Stuart Andrews, afterwards settled in New York and Pennsylvania.

On November 17th, 1874, when Henry Morton Stanley marched away from Bagamoyo on what was to be his greatest exploring achievement, he was retracing his own steps of 1871 along the well-worn caravan route used by Burton and Speke in 1857; by Speke and Grant in 1860, and, writes C.E. Hamshere, many Arab traders before them.