the British empire

Falsifying history can only increase racial tension

31 August 2024 9:00 am

Frank Furedi argues that historic memory is the key to the identity of any coherent community, and that attacking it undermines a population’s solidarity

The greed and hypocrisy of the opium trade continue to shock

10 February 2024 9:00 am

Amitav Ghosh admits he found writing his history difficult because of the obscene profiteering and suffering he had to cover

The British Empire’s latest crime – to have ended the Enlightenment

2 December 2023 9:00 am

Richard Whatmore sees trade and colonisation in the 19th century as the great threat to Enlightenment ideals, and British imperialism as an unremitting force of darkness

Masters of the opium trade: the fabulous wealth of the Sassoons

19 February 2022 9:00 am

David Abulafia admires the shrewdness, generosity and panache of the Sassoons over many generations

The British Empire is now the subject on which the sun never sets

5 December 2020 9:00 am

Wrestling with the history of the British Empire is the unfinished and unfinishable project of our history. Time’s Monster takes…

Preparing for modern warfare: Indian infantrymen c. 1940

The making of modern India

26 March 2016 9:00 am

The sacrifices made by India on the Allies’ behalf in the second world war would profoundly affect the country’s future for better or worse, says Philip Hensher

The death of General Gordon by George W. Joy

Why the British make a virtue of defeat

20 February 2016 9:00 am

When Henry Worsley died last month attempting the first solo, unaided expedition across the Antarctic, he was 30 miles short…

A Sikh member of the Indian Army Services Corps at Dunkirk, 1940

Britain didn’t fight the second world war — the British empire did

25 July 2015 9:00 am

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 colonialism is once again under attack in Aatish Taseer’s sprawling Indian epic

21 March 2015 9:00 am

Early in the second section of Aatish Taseer’s The Way Things Were we are presented with a striking description of…

The Irish Times: read by the smug denizens of Dublin 4 and responsible for the Celtic Tiger property bubble

21 March 2015 9:00 am

The most successful newspapers have a distinct personality of their own with which their readers connect. In Britain, the Daily…