Empire

Maurice Collis visits the former Dutch and Portuguese port colony.

British imperial architecture as epitomised by the work of Sir Herbert Baker was not tied to any geographic setting. Its elements could be re-ordered to fit any tropical dependency. As Thomas R. Metcalf explains, what had been hammered out in Pretoria, and redefined in Delhi, could be carried to such places as Kenya. But Baker, who designed the imperial acropolis of New Delhi with Lutyens, differed from his colleague, "the most original and creative architect of his age." For Baker architecture always served a political purpose: for Lutyens, Empire was incidental.

The life of Rhodes - an empire-builder, arch risk-taker, megalomaniac mine-owner and namesake of Zimbabwe's pre-independence antecedant, Rhodesia.

Graham Seal explores the life and legend of Ned Kelly.

'Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh' was the chant of radicals in the 1960s and 1970s, idolising the Communist leader who led Vietnam's Revolutionary struggle first against French colonialism and then against the United States' involvement in Vietnam. 

The Roman invasion of Britain divided its constituent kingdoms and tribes. Some supported the Romans, others fiercely opposed their occupation and suffered dreadfully as a consequence. In the face of continuing resentment at their occupation the Romans, argues Graham Webster, changed from a policy of repression, and began to pay careful attention to the feelings and aspirations of their British subjects.

When the British and Maori signed the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, Governor Hobson declared: 'We are one people'. Today, as Professor Keith Sinclair shows, this hope has still to be realised.

Decisive Naval Campaigns in the Rise of the West, Vol. I, 1481-1654 by Peter Padfield

by R. J. W. Evans

Gandhi's lasting significance lies, perhaps, not so much in what he actually did, but what he stood for.... Men like him may be done to death, but their message is not silenced in the making of this century.