The British Empire

An engraving depicting London's Piccadilly Circus heaving with crowds on their way to The Great Exhibition of 1851. A banner reading 'God save the Queen and Prince Albert' has been strung across the street. Within the Crystal Palace some 100,000 objects were displayed – taking up ten miles of space – the work of 15,000 contributors. (Photo by Rischgitz/Getty Images)

From the Great Exhibition to the Festival of Britain: the decline and fall of the British empire

Priya Satia explores how historians helped advance the British empire, only to later become critics of imperialism. (Image by Getty Images)

How historians helped build the British empire

Queen Victoria

The Victorians and the British Empire: a brief guide and timeline

Sujit Sivasundaram offers a new perspective on the expansion of the British empire across the Indian and Pacific Oceans. (Image by Getty Images)

Imperialism on the oceans

Woodcut illustration of slave labour on a sugar plantation

Success, sugar and slaves: the uncomfortable story of slaveholder Simon Taylor

Attack on the Court-House, St. Thomas-in-the-East, Jamaica, during the Morant Bay rebellion, October 1865. (Photo by Getty Images)

Resistance in the British empire

A British officer stands alongside two of his Japanese counterparts in 1914 in Tsingtao (now Qingdao). Japanese troops played a key role in the capture of that strategic German concession in north-east China. (Photo by Getty Images)

First World War

First World War: beyond the western front

Illustration by Davide Bonazzi

The big question: should museums return their treasures?

A c1860 depiction of Wentworth Works steel manufacturer in Sheffield

Why Britain punched above its weight

A young visitor looks at a painting depicting the Amritsar Massacre

Amritsar: day of shame

A memorial tomb to King Æthelstan, the first Saxon king of all England, in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire. (Photo by Geography Photos/UIG via Getty Images)

A brief history of England

A First World War silk screened poster c1918 showing a frightening German soldier holding a bloodied bayonet. Caption reads:

First World War

Why did the Allies call Germans ‘Huns’ during World War I?

The Tibetan plateau lies at an altitude averaging over 4,500 metres above sea level

In the footsteps of Sir Francis Younghusband’s 1903 invasion of Tibet

Daniele Manin proclaiming the Republic of Venice, 22 March 1848. (Photo by De Agostini Picture Library/A. Dagli Orti/Bridgeman Images)

1848: the year of revolutions

Alphonse de Neuville's 1880 painting 'The Defence of Rorke's Drift'. The battle was to become a

The battle of Rorke’s Drift: a stand still clad in the “myths of empire”