Britain

Kipling, Kim and Imperialism

Kipling's view of imperialism, explain Fred Reist and David Washbrook, was a more complex one than his single, famous line quoted often out of context, 'Oh, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.' 

The British Army and the Slave Revolt: Saint Domingue in the 1790s

'Thrice had his foot Domingo's island prest, Midst horrid wars and fierce barbarian wiles; Thrice had his blood repelled the yellow pest That stalks, gigantic, through the Western Isles!' ran the epitaph to one of the more than 20,000 British soldiers sent to St. Domingue in the 1790s.

British Views of India

The British had been trading in India since 1600. As R.W. Lightbown, it was not, however, until the late eighteenth century that British interest in Indian culture burgeoned and was carried home by the traveller.

Administering India: The Indian Civil Service

To hundreds of thousands of Indians the British Raj was personified by its administrative arm, the Indian Civil Service, explains Ann Ewing, by which the British governed its imperial possession through a small élite spread thinly throughout the vast sub-continent.

England v Germany 1938: Football as Propaganda

In the inter-war years, football was a popular sport which drew huge crowds of spectators. The totalitarian regimes of Germany and Italy, argues Peter J. Beck, were not slow to realise the propaganda, potential of their nations' sporting successes – and soon Britain recognised the value of sport to its own national image.

Crossing The Thames: London Bridges that might have been

'London is rich in historic buildings and monuments, but behind most familiar landmarks lurk the ghosts of abandoned designs and rejected projects.' In this extract from their book London as it might have been, Felix Barker and Ralph Hyde consider bridges which were planned for the Thames.

Ordnance Building at the Tower of London

From the Restoration in 1660 until 1714, England was intermittently at war with first the Dutch and then the French - and it became imperative, argues Howard Tomlinson, that the country should have an adequate central armoury for general ordnance equipment.