Constantine Gerakis, c 1648-88, better known as Phaulkon, was an exemplar of Europe's burgeoning influence in Asia in the seventeenth century. He played the role of intermediary between the representatives of the European powers and King Narai of Siam with great success, argues Robert Bruce, but paid for eventual failure with his life.
Michael Howard on the culture of imperial Britain in the face of international competition in the economic and military spheres.
Neither the Greeks nor the Romans paid much attention to the achievements or customs of the peoples that they conquered. As Jenny Morris shows here, in the case of their Jewish subjects this indifference caused problems that had both religious and political repercussions.
Ian Duffield finds much of interest in a new account of the beginnings of British imperialism
The Exhibition held in Wembley in 1924 was intended to herald a great Imperial revival - in fact, as Kenneth Walthew shows here, it was to prove an escapist delight from post-war gloom and retrenchment.
Noel Carrington recalls how he was a Witness to the Past, as the Prince of Wales toured India in 1921.
In 1844 the people of the former Spanish colony of Santo Domingo rose in rebellion against the Haitians who had occupied their island since 1822. But instead of trying to establish genuine independence for their Dominican Republic, its political leaders did their best to trade it off to France and then to Spain which briefly re-annexed it in 1861.
Irene Coltman Brown looks at how the significance of the Peloponnesian war for its historian, Thucydides, was that it demonstrated that imperial power, to be used at all, has to be abused.
In the mid-seventeenth century Spain was at the apogee of artistic and cultural achievement under the patronage of her monarch, Philip IV - but, as R.A. Stradling shows here, she was fighting for survival as a great imperial power.
Stephen Usherwood shows how Lord Mansfield employed his precise legal mind and his reasoned humanitarianism to expose the iniquities of slavery - and thus helped pave the way for its abolition.
