Empire

Not for the first or last time in their history, writes David Ward, the Czechs in 1848 made a bid for political freedom.

Dufferin urged upon an unresponsive government in London moderate proposals for representative reform in India. In fact, writes Briton Martin Jnr., reform was carried out twenty years later; too late, in the light of history.

Briton Martin Jnr. describes how Lord Dufferin set out for India, intending his rule to be a period of conservative calm, but found himself involved in the anxieties of “The Burmese Adventure”.

Béla Menczer describes how the last Austrian Emperor strove to regain one of his family’s Kingdoms.

Michael Langley describes how missionary endeavour, the ambition of Cecil Rhodes and the technology of mining engineers combined to create the background of modern Zambia.

R.B. Oram recounts an episode in the history of British shipping.

The result of the Seven Weeks’ War in 1866 subordinated the Austrian Empire to Prussian ambitions. Brian Bond describes the last lightning victory in the Napoleonic manner, until Hitler’s blitzkrieg of 1940.

George Woodcock gives an account of an Imperial enterprise in south-east Asia.

For some sixty years during the eighteenth century, writes Sarah Searight, Louisiana was a colony owing allegiance to the King of France.

Terence H. O'Brien describes how Alfred Milner, later the apostle of the British Empire, paid a revealing visit as a young man to Ireland, then in the throes of the Home Rule struggle.