Empire

The King of Aragon was deeply involved in the religious wars of the thirteenth century in south-western France, writes Jan Read.

Both Don Carlos in 1568 and Don Ferdinand in 1807 were accused by their fathers of conspiracy to usurp the throne of Spain, as Douglas Hilt finds here.

Jan Read describes Al-Mansur, the honorific name for the leader who restored Moorish power in Spain during the late tenth century.

“Both the Aztec and the Inca states were the products of recent political developments”: Roger Howell discovers that the Spaniards who conquered them had little real understanding of the civilizations that they overthrew.

George Woodcock describes how, in opposition to Portuguese, Dutch and British intruders, the highland kingdom of Kandy in Ceylon flourished under a succession of Buddhist rulers almost until the year of Waterloo.

Michael Roberts examines the end of the reign of a Swedish monarch of "natural genius".

For 444 years Goa has been ruled by the Portuguese; today their rule is challenged by the Republic of India. By C.R. Boxer.

C.R. Boxer examines the travels and writings of Robert Knox in a 17th century Buddhist kingdom.

Administrator, Orientalist, patron of science and founder of Singapore, Raffles was an enlightened Governor of Java during the British occupation, 1811-1816. By Dorothy Woodman.

Gibraltar, writes Charles Dimont, provides one of the examples of how the British Empire was “acquired in a fit of absence of mind.” 

Britain’s involvement in the Middle East between the wars proved a rich seam for authors of adventure stories. Michael Paris shows how these, in turn, helped to reinforce the imperial mission.

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. Whatever its rights and wrongs, it was indeed a decisive step towards "the end of Empire".

The Russians were the first Europeans to sense California's potential, George Edinger writes, and had they not sold their settlement there in 1841, seven years before the Gold Rush, the world could have been a different place a century later.