Empire

Although little known, the disastrous East India Company intervention in Java had a significant influence on India's governance and left Stamford Raffles’ reputation in tatters.

Patricia Cleveland-Peck looks at the long history of plant dispersal between the New World and the Old.

What role did Simon Bolivar play in the history of Latin America's independence from Spain?

For much of the British Civil Wars the colony of Barbados remained neutral, allowing both Parliamentarian and Royalist exiles to run their plantations and trade side by side. But with the collapse of the king’s cause in the late 1640s matters took a violent turn, as Matthew Parker relates.

The desire of western governments, most notably those of Britain, to apologise for the actions of their predecessors threatens to simplify the complexities of history, argues Tim Stanley.

During the seventh century the Arabs invaded North Africa three times, bringing not just Islam but a language and customs that were alien to the Berber tribes of the Sahara.

Brazil may be one of the 21st century’s emerging superpowers, but its independence from Portugal was not inevitable, nor was its survival certain.

The great trading companies that originated in early modern Europe are often seen as pioneers of western imperialism. The Levant Company was different, argues James Mather.

Was Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace a monument to Britain’s colonial achievement or a fragile symbol of a fragmenting imperial dream?

Richard Cavendish marks the anniversary of this great emperor's accession, on March 7th, AD 161.