Empire

J.H.M. Salmon profiles an important - but largely forgotten - historian of the ancien régime, whose main theme was expansion in Asia and in the New World.

George Grey was governor in succession of South Australia, New Zealand, Cape Colony and New Zealand again. Cyril Hamshere charts a most remarkable career in the Victorian Colonial service.

Gerald Morgan introduces Byron’s friend and executor; a radical Whig and head of the East India Company during the Afghan troubles of 1835-43.

As Consul General for Great Britain in Egypt, Henry Salt established a friendly understanding with the free Albanian Viceroy Mohamed Ali. John Brinton describes how, through their relationship, Salt was able to rescue many treasures of ancient Egyptian art.

James Edward Oglethorpe obtained a charter for the founding of Georgia in 1732. Courtney Dainton describes how the English social reformer spent three terms as chief administrator of the colony and lived long enough to see American independence.

The Sikhs of the Punjab were the last strong Indian military power in the early nineteenth century, writes Patrick Turnbull.

Patrick Turnbull writes that the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, which opened on March 3rd, 1954, and continued until early May, marked the end not only of French, but of European hegemony in Asia.

Europe knew little about black Africa, writes Steven R. Smith, until the trading voyages of the late sixteenth century.

Christopher Hibbert describes how the massacre at Cawnpore was one of the events in the Indian Mutiny not expected by benevolent British Commanders.

William Gardener describes how Russia's stealthy advance across Siberia led to close relations with China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.