How a humiliating defeat secured Britain its empire
After the Amboyna massacre of 1623, the newly-fledged East India Company conceded the spice trade to the Dutch – to focus instead on the riches of India
The forgotten masterpieces of Indian art
As late as the end of the 18th century, only a handful of Europeans had ever seen the legendary Mughal…
As English spread over the subcontinent, India lost forever its rich Persianate literary heritage
In the seventh century, the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang made an epic journey through the Gobi desert and over the…
Algeria reminds us that the current of colonisation doesn’t always run just one way
As you glide in to land at the airport outside Algiers, the landscape resembles that of Tuscany: a coastal plain…
Bloodbath at Baisakhi: the centenary of the Amritsar massacre
On 10 April 1919, the peppery governor of the Punjab, Sir Michael O’Dwyer, ordered the immediate arrest of two leaders…
Britain didn’t fight the second world war — the British empire did
Had it not been for the empire, Britain might have lost the second world war, says William Dalrymple. The war certainly lost Britain the empire
British India — the scene of repeated war crimes throughout the 19th century
William Dalrymple is uncomfortably reminded of the astonishing savagery by which the East India Company maintained the Raj throughout the 19th century
William Dalrymple's notebook: How I lured Jhumpa Lahiri and Jonathan Franzen to Jaipur
In 2004, ten days after I moved my family to a new life in India, I gave a reading at…
