Empire

The death-obsessed and inward-looking Aztec civilisation sowed the seeds of its own destruction, argues Tim Stanley.

Hugh Thomas tells Paul Lay about his unparalleled research into the lives of the extraordinary generation of men who conquered the New World for Golden Age Spain.

Caligula was assassinated on January 24th, AD 41. He reputedly slept with his sisters and wanted to appoint his horse a consul. But was Tiberius' successor really insane or did he simply struggle to deal with the unlimited power that he received at such a young age?

David Mattingly revisits an article by Graham Webster, first published in History Today in 1980, offering a surprisingly sympathetic account of Roman imperialism.

Rowena Hammal examines the fears and insecurities, as well as the bombast and jingoism, in British thinking.

A cremation ghat built in Brighton for Indian soldiers who fought in the First World War has recently been inscribed with their names, writes Rosie Llewellyn-Jones.

Little remains of the great North African empire that was Rome's most formidable enemy, because, as Richard Miles explains, only its complete annihilation could satisfy its younger rival.

Hywel Williams revisits an article by Peter Munz, first published in History Today in 1959, and asks who needed whose approval most, the great ruler of the Franks or Pope Leo III?

Rosie Llewellyn-Jones recalls the Victorian economist who helped resolve the financial crisis in India after the Mutiny of 1857.

Bernard Lewis writes that the fall of Constantinople was no “victory of barbarism, but rather of another and not undistinguished civilization.”