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Star witness: how the Royal Observatory transformed our understanding of astronomy and time
From the moment it was founded 350 years ago, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich drove our understanding of astronomy, navigation and time. Louise Devoy explores eight milestones in the history of this pioneering scientific institution
The big bang moment 1675: Charles II sparks a star-gazing revolution In the 17th century, the great maritime nations were vying to solve a puzzle that had confounded philosophers for many centuries: how to determine exact positions on the Earth’s surface. And in Britain, Charles II took a major step to ensure his realm’s position at the head of the pack. On 4 March 1675, the king signed a royal warrant appointing John Flamsteed as the first “astronomical observator”, tasked with “perfecting the art of navigation”. Flamsteed’s specific objective was to devise a method by which sailors could establish their longitude (east–west position) at sea – which involved measuring the positions of celestial bodies – and of knowing the time at a ship’s local position. And Flamsteed would get to carry out this vital research from the surroundings of the country’s first state-funded, purpose-built scientific institution: the Royal Observatory. It was urgent work, because England’s great rival, France, had stolen a march: Louis XIV had established an observatory in Paris nearly a decade earlier. Flamsteed was, in effect, playing catch-up. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/T809MT-CMYKWeb-Ready-7606aa3.jpg" width="2663" height="1775" alt="an illustration showing a large crowd looking at several artefacts including a globe, a map, and a satellite dish" title="King Louis XIV visits the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1671. The creation of an observatory in the French capital had left England playing catch-up (Image by Alamy)" /> The size of the task facing the astronomer clearly wasn’t lost on Charles II, for the king appointed none other than the celebrated architect Christopher Wren to design the observatory. Wren’s chosen site was the hilltop ruins of Greenwich Castle – and it was here that the foundation stone was laid on 10 August 1675. With its lofty windows, royal portraits and accurate pendulum clocks, the octagonal ‘star chamber’, completed in 1676, was grand in appearance. Unfortunately, it was also unsuitable for mapping the stars, as it was 13.5° askew from the meridian, an imaginary north-south line connecting the poles. So Wren designed another building nearby. This one would last for the remainder of Flamsteed’s tenure, before being demolished, rebuilt and extended as the Meridian Observatory. As for Flamsteed, he went on to conceive Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), by which he produced an average (‘mean’) 24-hour day that could be tracked using a mechanical clock year round. And that would have ramifications across the planet. Read more | A brief history of astronomy Dressed for success 1767: How a man in a padded suit transformed the art of navigation No one could accuse Nevil Maskelyne of not being dedicated to his job. In the dead of night across the mid-1760s, the fifth Astronomer Royal could be found staring up at the sky for hour upon hour, while straining his ears to hear the beats of a nearby clock. Dressed in an extravagant padded suit made from wool, silk and linen, Maskelyne was prepared for all that a British winter could throw at him. Not even perishing temperatures could stand in the way of the task in hand: to devise a ‘lunar distance method’ to calculate longitude at sea. This technique required mariners to measure the angular distance between the moon and a specific star, then compare it to Greenwich time. And they all used data gleaned from Maskelyne’s meticulous study of the movement of the stars. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/1767-L4962-001-CMYKWeb-Ready-30917ec.jpg" width="1709" height="1139" alt="Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne wore this wool, silk and linen suit to ward off the perishing cold while studying the stars (Image by Royal Museum Greenwich)" title="Astronomer Royal Nevil Maskelyne wore this wool, silk and linen suit to ward off the perishing cold while studying the stars (Image by Royal Museum Greenwich)" /> This was, however, far from a one-man endeavour. Maskelyne was joined on his freezing vigils by his assistant, David Kinnebrook, and enlisted a network of mathematicians – dubbed ‘computers’ – to work remotely on calculating the predicted position of the moon over the year ahead. The Astronomer Royal even had a team of ‘comparers’ check the computers’ work (which paid off when two of them were found to be copying one another’s work). All this enabled Maskelyne to produce the Nautical Almanac, the first edition of which was made available on 6 January 1767. It quickly became an essential tool in navigation, reducing the time taken to make longitude calculations from hours to minutes. Updated annually, the Almanac became a required element of navigators’ training, and set the trend for mariners to calculate their position relative to Greenwich. High standards 1833: A curious metal sphere regulates clocks It can be seen from miles around – and with good reason. Sitting atop the Royal Observatory is a large red, metal ball that rises to the top of a mast at the same time every day, and drops a few minutes later. For those who haven’t set eyes on it before, it makes for a strange sight. But what is it there for? To answer that question, we need to rewind to 1764 when John Harrison, the celebrated English clockmaker, sent his fourth marine timekeeper, later known as ‘H4’, on a trial voyage to Barbados. The clock performed exceptionally well, losing a mere 39.2 seconds over 47 days at sea. To Harrison’s delight, it proved that such devices could provide mariners accurate reference times for calculating longitude. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/dreamstimexxl73355384-CMYKWeb-Ready-1ba1cb2.jpg" width="6567" height="4378" alt="A photograph of a large red brick building, with a domed roof on the right. There is a tower with a red ball on the top. Behind the building there is a purple and orange cloudy sunset" title="The time ball was installed on the turret of Flamsteed House at the Royal Observatory in 1833. It dropped at 1pm each day, enabling mariners to check their on-board chronometers (Image by Dreamstime)" /> Other clockmakers developed Harrison’s innovative ideas into a standard design that was cheaper and easier to reproduce. By the 1820s, the ‘marine chronometer’ was being used on both commercial and Royal Navy ships. But these chronometers only worked if they were telling the correct time when ships left port. That’s where the Greenwich ‘time ball’ came in. A time ball is a large spherical device that drops at a predetermined time of day, enabling mariners to set their clocks by it. The first modern example of this technology was erected in Portsmouth in 1829. Greenwich’s, however, would be the most famous. It was installed in 1833 on Flamsteed House, at the heart of the Observatory, providing maximum visibility from the Thames. Ever since, it has risen halfway up the mast at 12.55pm, climbed to the top at 12.58pm and then dropped at precisely 1pm GMT. Soon time balls were appearing at harbours and observatories around the globe, meaning that mariners could check their chronometers against accurate clocks, even during the longest of voyages. Timetable drama 1852: Greenwich rides to the railways' rescue Take a stroll down Corn Street in the heart of Bristol and you’ll come across a clock mounted to the wall of the city’s old corn exchange. There’s nothing unusual about that, you may think. But take a closer look and you’ll notice that this elegant 1820s timepiece has two hands for minutes: a red one for GMT and a black one for local Bristol time. The clock is a curious snapshot of a bygone age, and also a marker of a technological conundrum that the Royal Observatory played a central role in solving. The mid-19th century was very much the age of the railways – by the 1840s tracks were snaking across the country. This was all well and good. But when, in 1847, the railway companies decided to coordinate their timetables across Britain using GMT, they ran into a problem. Back then, Britain’s cities relied on local times set by sundials, varying by as much as 30 minutes between west and east. So how could the railway companies ensure that these times were perfectly aligned? <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/GettyImages-170477153-CMYKWeb-Ready-b814769.jpg" width="2589" height="1726" alt="With its three hands, the clock on Bristol’s Corn Exchange offers a snapshot of an age when Britain’s cities relied on a variety of local times (Image by Getty Images)" title="With its three hands, the clock on Bristol’s Corn Exchange offers a snapshot of an age when Britain’s cities relied on a variety of local times (Image by Getty Images)" /> Enter George Biddell Airy, the seventh Astronomer Royal. Airy reasoned that a new technology – that of sending impulses via telegraph wires to a series of synchronised dials – could provide a solution. And so he ordered a new timepiece – the Shepherd Motor Clock – to be installed at the Royal Observatory. From 1852, the clock began sending daily time signals to railway stations across London and Kent, along with hourly signals to the Electric Telegraph Company on London’s Strand for national distribution. Train travel would never be the same again and, by 1880, GMT had been embraced as Britain’s legal Civil Time. Read more | Art, culture and science in the Restoration period A moment in the sun 1874: Greenwich leads the race to record the transit of Venus For astronomers everywhere, 9 December 1874 was like Christmas come early. Star gazers counted down the days to this landmark date, while George Biddell Airy ordered expeditions to Egypt, New Zealand and the Indian Ocean to observe the amazing event unfolding overhead. That event was a transit of Venus, a rare astronomical phenomenon in which the planet appears to cross the Sun as a slow-moving black dot. This was the first time that the transit had occurred since 1769, and the first such event since the invention of photography in the 1820s. Little wonder astronomers were excited. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/T4323-001-CMYKWeb-Ready-44133fe.jpg" width="5686" height="3790" alt="An observation hut is set up in Greenwich ahead of the transit of Venus in 1874. This astronomical phenomenon enabled star-gazers to accurately calculate the Sun-Earth distance (Image by Royal Museum Greenwich)" title="An observation hut is set up in Greenwich ahead of the transit of Venus in 1874. This astronomical phenomenon enabled star-gazers to accurately calculate the Sun-Earth distance (Image by Royal Museum Greenwich)" /> And their excitement was justified. By timing the transit’s key moments as seen from different locations on Earth, star gazers can measure the Sun–Earth distance, known as the ‘astronomical unit’. This yardstick (just under 93 million miles) is still used by scientists today. Ahead of the 1874 transit, Airy ordered special telescopes known as photoheliographs to project the Sun’s disc onto glass plates. However, his teams struggled with the kit, and the photoheliographs failed to capture the transit with any great accuracy. Despite those issues, the transit of Venus inspired a renewed interest in sun studies. Greenwich assistant EW Maunder started to compile a daily record of sunspot observations. In 1904, Maunder and his wife, Annie, assembled 30 years of sunspot data into the ‘butterfly diagram’ that still underpins our understanding of the Sun’s 11-year magnetic cycle. A degree of certainty 1884: The world aligns itself to Greenwich John Flamsteed had been dead for more than a century. Yet, on 13 October 1884, his great brainchild, Greenwich Mean Time, truly went global. On that day, delegates at the International Meridian Conference in Washington, DC voted in favour of making Greenwich the world’s prime meridian, or 0° longitude. The decision was influenced by a combination of technological supremacy and pragmatism. Greenwich was one of only four observatories with a suitably accurate telescope – the Airy Transit Circle Telescope – to define a meridian. And more than 70 per cent of shipping companies by tonnage already relied on the Greenwich meridian. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/11/2YXWWWX-CMYKWeb-Ready-602ff19.jpg" width="3242" height="2161" alt="Delegates at the 1884 International Meridian Conference agreed to use the Greenwich meridian as 0° longitude (Image by Alamy)" title="Delegates at the 1884 International Meridian Conference agreed to use the Greenwich meridian as 0° longitude (Image by Alamy)" /> The delegates also agreed that the Universal Day – a 24-hour period to be used as a common reference to record events around the world – should begin at midnight GMT on the Greenwich meridian. This would hardly have come as a surprise: a year earlier, railroads in the US had already agreed to use standard time zones based on hourly meridians from Greenwich. The delegates assembled in the American capital that October day voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Universal Day, and countries started to define their own standard time zones as hourly intervals before or after Greenwich. The result was the familiar time-zone system we use today. Seeing double 1893: The Royal Observatory makes its biggest statement yet Was Greenwich under threat? The International Meridian Conference of 1884 might have confirmed the Royal Observatory’s primacy in the world of astronomy. But, within a year, the eighth Astronomer Royal, William Christie, was voicing his concerns that the principal telescope at Greenwich was being overtaken by newer, better instruments at rival observatories across Europe and North America. Determined to keep Greenwich out in front of the chasing pack, Christie persuaded the Admiralty to fund a new instrument, and that 28-inch diameter lens telescope – still the largest of its type in Britain – came into use in 1893. Most other telescopes at Greenwich were designed to be fixed into position to ensure the accurate measurement of the stars for timekeeping and navigation. The Great Equatorial Telescope – named after its mount, which kept the instrument moving parallel to the Earth’s equator – was part of a new generation designed for astrophotography. With a clockwork drive that kept the instrument moving in sync with the stars from east to west, it could be used to take photos with very long exposures stretching to several hours, capturing impressive views of faint gas clouds (nebulae). However, astronomers struggled to configure the heavy glass lens for photography, and so the telescope was reassigned to the study of double stars. By measuring the changing angle between an orbiting pair of stars, the astronomers could now calculate the mass of these distant suns. All that came to an end in 1971 when the Great Equatorial Telescope was finally retired. However, you can still see this extraordinary instrument – housed in its distinctive onion-shaped dome – at Greenwich today. Read more | A brief history of daylight saving time Pip pip hooray 1924: GMT is piped into homes across Britain If we want to know the time in 2025, all we have to do is check the phone in our pocket, or glance at the digital watch on our wrists. Across most of the 20th century, of course, that wasn’t an option. If Britons sought an accurate time-check that they could, quite literally, set their clocks and watches by, then they had to turn on their radios and listen out for the familiar strains of the ‘six pips’. The six pips first entered the public consciousness on 5 February 1924, when the ninth Astronomer Royal, Frank Dyson (below), announced a collaboration with the BBC. The Royal Observatory would start sending electrical impulses down a telephone wire to the newly created broadcaster. These would then be converted into a series of six audio alerts – or ‘pips’ – that would go out on the radio on the hour, every hour. But while some technologies were underscoring Greenwich’s enduring relevance, others were undermining it. In the 1930s, scientists developed clocks based on the natural vibration of quartz crystals; then, a decade later, the first atomic timekeepers began to appear. Both offered reliability and accuracy that the system of measuring time by the stars couldn’t match. This wasn’t the only threat to the Royal Observatory’s pre-eminence in the 20th century. As the march of industry impacted visibility across London’s skies, so Greenwich’s suitability for the practice of astrophysics declined. Soon it became clear that the Observatory would have to move. And it did so twice – first to East Sussex in 1957; then to Cambridge in 1990. Eight years later, it shut altogether. Time had finally caught up with the great old scientific institution. But its huge contribution to the fields of astronomy, timekeeping and navigation cannot be doubted – as the many thousands of people who visit the Royal Observatory museum that now occupies the famous Greenwich complex will no doubt testify. John Flamsteed would surely be proud. Dr Louise Devoy is senior curator at the Royal Observatory and author of Royal Observatory Greenwich: A History in Objects (October, 2025) This article was first published in the November 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Michael Wood on the struggle of memory against forgetting | "Place names are signposts to the past"
"Place names are signposts to the past. And how revealing they are", writes Michael Wood
I was recently back in Devon. Long ago, on childhood holidays from the industrial north, this seemed to me the ‘real’ England. Still today, a rusting cast-iron signpost peeping through the foliage in a sunken lane gives me an inexplicable thrill. It’s the idea that the deep past might still be touched, just around the corner. Place names are signposts to the past. Chulmleigh, Woolfardisworthy, Nymet Rowland… what names! And how revealing they are. Take Ipplepen, a village with Roman and Iron Age roots in the hills near Torquay. A recent dig here turned up a small post-Roman cemetery, in use till the eighth century, and a Roman butchers shop, with coins and broken amphorae that once held olive oil, wine and fish sauce imported from the Mediterranean. The name Ipplepen was first recorded in the 10th century, and contains a personal name that appears to be Roman-British or Celtic: Epilus or Ipela. In a region where the Celtic (pre-Welsh) language may have died out only after 1066, the name of the pre-English landowner was, incredibly, passed down. Read more | The Romans were blamed for massacring these Iron Age warriors. But did they actually murder themselves? In the Home Counties, ancient British (or Welsh) place names are mainly gone – except for river names. Here they linger, from the Thames to smaller watercourses such as the wonderfully named Rib, Beane and Maran (or Mimram) in Hertfordshire. Sometimes English newcomers didn’t understand these words. Avon, of course, has the same derivation as afon, Welsh for river. Bredon Hill includes no fewer than three words with the same meaning: bre is Welsh and dun is Old English, both translating as ‘hill’. So: Hill-hill Hill! Some place names tell of events. You can track the first phase of Viking settlement in hybrid names such as Grimston, denoting an English settlement (or village) taken by Grim, a leading member of the Great Army that invaded Britain from 865. Then, with the second wave of migration, came the names ending in ‘by’, meaning farm – Grimsby, for example. Finally, there are the ‘thorp’ names, meaning homestead, as in Scunthorpe. These names were left by third-wave immigrants who were forced to open up poorer land on the fringes. Place names show how the dominant language takes over, in whichever way it happens. Across the world, the pattern was the same – especially in the age of imperialism. Think of the overlay of English names in Ireland, Australia, New Zealand or the US. There the indigenous inhabitants were wiped out or pushed into corners, yet place names associated with them still populate the landscape, from Alabama to Wyoming. Take Michigan, which is ‘big lake’ in the speech of the Ottawa tribe; or Mississippi, ‘Big River’ in Algonquin. From Malibu to the Napa Valley, telltale signposts remain, despite ethnic cleansing by European settlers and colonialists. In Ireland as recently as 2005, the Placenames Commission issued a list of 2,000 Gaelic equivalents to English place names. And, of course, people in power are still at it – witness Donald Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. Read more | The real Viking Age: when did the era of Norse expansion start and end? A revealing example is told in Sacred Landscape (2002), a remarkable book by the Israeli writer, historian and political scientist Meron Benvenisti. His father was an Israeli geographer on the Government Names Commission tasked after 1948 with giving Palestinian villages and landscapes names linked to Israel’s biblical homeland. New Hebrew place names, resonating with the biblical story of the Holy Land, replaced the Arabic names of more than 9,000 natural features, villages and even ruins in the new Israel. Benvenisti’s story shows first-hand how place names were used to help change an earlier Arab landscape into the modern Israeli state. Of course, such things have happened throughout history. Centuries after the Moors were expelled from Spain, today’s tourists can still detect the contours of Muslim Spain, from the Alhambra to Granada’s Zacatín (clothes-sellers) Street – still a clothes market. Yet a Palestinian returning now to his ancestral landscape after seven decades away would often be hard pushed to identify the sites of his erstwhile home. The signposts are gone. The story Benvenisti tells is about a battle over the “signposts of memory” that are essential to all human beings. As the novelist Milan Kundera said, “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” Often slowly, imperceptibly, over time – but sometimes at a stroke – history is erased. But sometimes it still magically endures, even over millennia. People have long memories. Ask the folk in Ipplepen. This column was first published in the July 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Do The Travels of Marco Polo belong in the non-fiction section, or fantasy?
Marco Polo’s adventures in Asia in the 13th century earned him everlasting fame, with his very name now synonymous with the excitement of exploration. But are his accounts of his travels essentially works of fiction? Peter Jackson asks if we can trust this medieval travel-writing superstar
Life had taken a turn for the worse for Rustichello of Pisa. In the dying days of the 13th century, the Italian romance writer found himself locked up as a prisoner of war. Over the previous years, Rustichello had made something of a name for himself as the first author to pen an Arthurian romance in Italian. Yet he had got himself captured while fighting for his native city in the Genoese-Pisan War. And so here he was, denied his freedom, languishing in a Genoese jail. Yet if Rustichello was searching for some sort of salvation, he didn’t have to look far. It lay in the identity of the curious individual with whom he shared his cell. That man began telling Rustichello an extraordinary story. It was a tale of an epic journey to China – of encounters with unimaginably rich and powerful rulers, of strange and exotic lands, of brushes with creatures that would make your heart race and skin crawl. And it triggered in Rustichello an idea. The Italian writer soon saw the potential of turning the memoirs of his well-travelled cellmate into a book. And so he set about writing them up in the default language of medieval romance: Old French, but with a smattering of Italian. The result – The Travels of Marco Polo, or Le Divisament du Monde (‘The Diverse Parts of the World’), as it was originally known – was Rustichello’s crowning achievement. And it would turn his cellmate, Marco Polo, into one of the most famous figures of the entire Middle Ages. Can we trust The Travels of Marco Polo? Le Divisament transformed perceptions of the far east across medieval Europe, introducing generations of readers to a world that they could barely conceive of, let alone visit. But look beyond its remarkable impact, and how much credence should we give to the text that Rustichello committed to paper following his incarceration with Polo? How useful is the book in understanding life in Asia – especially China – in the Middle Ages? In short, can we really trust Marco Polo’s word? Read more | Why are Marco Polo's travels so famous? To answer this question, we first need to untangle what kind of book Le Divisament was, and what it aimed to do. At its heart is the tale of how – in the early 1270s, at the age of just 17 – Marco embarked on an extraordinary journey to China with two other Polos: his father, Niccolò, and his uncle Maffeo. The trio, so Le Divisament tells us, travelled to the far east at the end of a superlative period of imperial expansion triggered by the rise of the great Mongol leader Genghis Khan (c1162–1227). So formidable was Genghis as both a warlord and a conqueror that the empire he established would, at its peak, extend all the way from eastern Europe to the Sea of Japan. However, by the time Marco and his companions arrived on the scene, the Mongol empire had split into a number of virtually autonomous states – and the age of rapid expansion was all but over. Only to the east – in the dominion of Genghis’s grandson, Kublai Khan – were major wars of conquest being fought, notably when, in 1279, Kublai extinguished the rule of southern China’s indigenous Song dynasty emperors Sadly, the original text of Le Divisament, describing the world that greeted Marco and his companions on their arrival in China, is lost. But there’s enough consistency between the various manuscripts to indicate that what we’re reading is essentially the same book. However, this is not necessarily the book you might expect. For all that its English title talks of Polo’s travels, Le Divisament is emphatically not a travelogue. Rather, it is a description of the known world, based loosely around Marco’s experiences. As descriptions go, it’s often an unsatisfactory one. The text is rambling and discursive. It is also given to maddeningly artificial changes of direction, such as when it embarks on a description of the Black Sea, before – having recalled that Marco has already given an account of this – heading off abruptly in another direction. There are other irritations. Despite repeatedly promising to confine himself to describing lands he had seen – and to distinguish personal observation from hearsay – the book includes regions, such as the coast of east Africa, that it’s highly unlikely Marco ever visited. For the most part, there is little sense of an itinerary. And yet, despite these limitations, there are extraordinary details to be found. What do we learn about the Mongols in the book? Le Divisament states that, having arrived at the court of Kublai Khan, Marco swiftly made a favourable impression on the Mongol ruler, who recruited him into his service. The Great Khan apparently despatched Marco as his representative on missions within China – and, in a number of cases, around the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. The Venetian was often charged with securing exotica for Kublai’s collection, such as the alms-bowl of the Buddha, and drafting interesting reports on these journeys. Marco’s accounts of his interactions with the Great Khan are remarkable. Read more | What was life like under the Mongol empire? Yet arguably more astonishing to his contemporaries were his descriptions of the marvels he had witnessed on his travels. Some of these are undoubtedly in the tradition of the fantastic – take, for example, the giant bird called the ruc, which could drop elephants from a great height. Many others, however, use exaggeration – and explore the remarkable within nature – rather than employ pure fabrication. So we read of a king of Champa (the southern part of present-day Vietnam) who has 326 children, and of a giant ruby in the possession of the king of Ceylon, a jewel Marco allegedly saw at first hand. Marco also describes huge Chinese ships, and invites us to marvel at the enormous populations of Chinese cities – not to mention the vast number of islands to be found in the Indian Ocean and the China Sea. The book sings the praises of a great island lying due east of China, named Cipingu, which abounds in gold and pearls. That island is now known as Japan – and Marco’s book was the earliest western source to mention it. Marco (or Rustichello) seems to take a positive pleasure in demolishing common misconceptions about the east back in western Europe. The mythical salamander is not a living creature but asbestos, an incombustible substance mined from earth. The corpses sold in India as dead pygmies are, in fact, dried monkeys. The unicorn is identified as a rhinoceros – not at all the kind of creature, the book assures us, that allows itself to be ensnared by virgins. Timeline: the life and travels of Marco Polo c1254 Marco Polo is born in Venice to a wealthy merchant. His mother dies when he is young and he is raised by extended family 1269 Marco’s father, Niccolò, and uncle Maffeo – both merchants – return to Venice after having visited the court of the Mongol leader Kublai Khan 1271 Niccolò, Maffeo and Marco set out on a new expedition. It’s believed that their journey east takes them through Iran, Afghanistan and on to China c1275 According to Marco’s account of his travels, the Polos arrive at Kublai Khan’s summer capital of Shangdu in modern-day north-eastern China c1275–c1292 In Marco’s words, he is appointed to serve as Kublai’s foreign emissary and spends the next 17 years travelling extensively across China c1292 The Polos escort a Mongol princess to Persia, visiting modern-day Vietnam and Sri Lanka en route. They eventually return to Venice c1298 Marco is captured by Venice’s enemies the Genoese. His cellmate in Genoa – an author called Rustichello – begins writing up (and embellishing) Marco’s memoirs c1300 Copies of Rustichello’s book The Travels of Marco Polo proliferate. It will help make Marco arguably the most celebrated explorer of the Middle Ages 8 January 1324 After living out the final years of his life in his native Venice, Marco Polo dies Did Marco Polo make up details in his Travels? So Marco witnessed some extraordinary sights on his travels – and he was all too happy to share them with his readership. Yet, to return to the question posed earlier: can we trust Marco’s word? When he lectured his fellow Europeans on the intricacies of life in the far east, how far was he dipping into the well of lived experience, and how much was make-believe? Certain details in the Le Divisament are undeniably questionable on historical grounds. Prominent among these is the claim that the Polos rendered invaluable assistance to Kublai’s forces in the capture of the city of Xiangyang. This is known to have occurred in 1273, a year or two prior to the Venetians’ arrival in China. In fact, Chinese sources give Muslim siege experts the credit for assisting Kublai’s assault on the city. This is not the only passage that stretches credulity. Niccolò and Maffeo had already travelled to China (in the early 1260s), and Le Divisament tells us that, during this first visit, they had been commissioned by Kublai to bring back to China 100 Christian missionaries together with some holy oil from Jerusalem. Read more | Your guide to the Silk Roads The book also claims that Pope Gregory X appointed the Polos as his ambassadors to the Mongol Ilkhan in Iran following a meeting in Acre. Both are great stories; neither is likely to be true. Many historians have also questioned the credibility of Marco’s co-author. Rustichello was known from his other writing to have been a habitual name-dropper – once claiming, for example, that the Lord Edward (the future Edward I of England) had lent him a book of Arthurian romance. Were Marco Polo's Travels believed at the time? Such scepticism has a long history. Le Divisament started making waves across western Europe from as early as the second decade of the 14th century – and it wasn’t long before rave reviews were being counter-balanced by the voicing of doubts. In particular, Marco’s contemporaries struggled with the contrast between the received image of the Mongols – a people customarily portrayed in 13th-century Europe as nomadic barbarians – and the book’s depiction of the wealth and impressive organisation of Kublai’s empire. In short, while Europeans could accept the existence of a sophisticated polity in the east, the idea it was presided over by the Mongols was far more difficult to swallow. Europeans were all too willing to lap up the fictional story of the Christian king Prester John, who, according to the traditional legend, ruled over a kingdom in the east. However, the version of Prester John’s life in Le Divisament – which described him as a minor prince overthrown, paradoxically, by Genghis Khan with the help of astrologers – was much less to their liking. What is the modern assessment of The Travels of Marco Polo? Modern critics are more troubled by what seem like glaring omissions from the Venetian’s text than his depiction of the Mongols. Marco’s failure to mention the Great Wall of China shouldn’t be held against him because, contrary to popular belief, the continuous structure that exists today had not yet been built. But it is more difficult to account for his silence regarding tea-drinking, the use of fingerprinting for authentication of documents, or the way Chinese women bound their feet. Other critics have pointed to the fact that, although Marco is at great pains to depict himself as a highly valued agent of the Great Khan, no reference to him has been found in Chinese sources. In the eyes of some modern academics, such omissions fundamentally undermine Marco’s entire story. One has even gone as far as to claim that he never made it further east than the Black Sea. Do I agree with this assessment? No. In my opinion, there is nothing intrinsically improbable about a Venetian finding employment in China under the Great Khan. Kublai is known to have recruited men of diverse talents to serve him. In fact, this seems to have been a trait of Mongol rulers: by 1289, the Ilkhans were employing Italians as envoys, interpreters and mercenaries. Marco’s maritime voyages on the Great Khan’s behalf fit easily within the burst of diplomatic activity that took Kublai’s representatives to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and peninsular India between 1278 and 1294. One explanation for the Polos’ absence from Chinese sources is that they would simply have been classed in the same category as all the many other foreign agents drawn from lands to the west of China. So numerous were these visitors that the Chinese had two terms for them: xiyu (‘westerners’) or semu (‘people of various nations’). What of the accusation that Marco grossly inflated the role he played in Kublai’s court and exaggerated his adventures? Even his most vigorous of defenders would have to concede that it’s highly likely that he did both. Yet he’d hardly be the first traveller to be guilty of such a ‘crime’. This doesn’t mean that he didn’t have any adventures at all. Read more | A knight's (tall) tale: why medieval traveller Sir John Mandeville was more popular than Marco Polo Maybe the best way to make any significant headway in the quest to determine the veracity of Marco’s writings is to locate documentary evidence to support his presence in the Mongol world. Unfortunately, this is in vanishingly short supply. Marco’s later life, in which he became a successful merchant, is comparatively well documented. But firm proof of his travels remains elusive. In fact, the nearest we get to documentary evidence is his uncle Maffeo’s will. This refers to “the three tablets of gold that were from the magnificent Chan of the Tartars”, a term that could mean either the Great Khan or one of his relatives. It is presumably one of these tablets that is mentioned in an inventory of Marco’s property drawn up decades after his death, during a dispute among his notoriously litigious kinsfolk. Why were Marco Polo's travels so significant? Ultimately, given the difficulties of the sources, and the doubts swirling around Marco’s account, perhaps we have to make an admission – that the most remarkable thing about the Polos’ travels is not so much that they happened, but when they happened. Their long journey to China fell several years before an Italian presence in Asia is even documented. It would be up to 30 years before the great age of Italian settlement in China’s coastal cities would get under way. That makes the Polos true pioneers. In the 13th century, Venetian and Genoese traders established footholds in Crimea and the chief camp-cities of Mongol princes in Iran and in the western steppes. Yet no one ventured nearly as far east as Marco and his two relatives. Is it any wonder, then, that generations of western Europeans read his accounts of his travels with slack-jawed wonder? As the 14th century went on, European voyages to China began to decline. Then, in 1368, a native Ming dynasty less ready to welcome foreign merchants kicked out the Mongol rulers from China. But the western imagination never lost sight of the image of a fabulously wealthy empire lying to the east. When Christopher Columbus embarked on his transatlantic journeys in the 1490s, which led to the ‘discovery’ of the New World, he was seeking an alternative route to ‘Cathay’. Before he boarded his ship on one of his famous voyages, Columbus packed an indispensable guide. It was a copy of Marco Polo’s book. Peter Jackson is emeritus professor of medieval history at Keele University. His books include The Mongols and the West (Routledge, 2018) This article was first published in the January 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
The real Viking Age: when did the era of Norse expansion start and end?
When did the Viking Age begin and end, and why is it so difficult to define? Explore when and how the era of Scandinavian raiders shaped history in Europe, and beyond.
For a long time, the period after the fall of the Western Roman Empire was known as the Dark Ages. Supposedly, it was a time of cultural and economic decline, when the continent was splintered into numerous fiefdoms with warlords vying for control in the power vacuum that the Romans left behind. The term ‘Dark Ages’ has been rejected by a growing number of historians, but there is still much from this era that remains difficult to bring to the light. This includes a clear definition and timeframe for the Viking Age. Attracted by the wealth in other lands, especially fortunes held by relatively defenceless monastic communities, Scandinavian seafarers left their own shores to raid, trade and ultimately settle in these fertile – and more hospitable – territories. By preying on kingdoms across Europe, and then assimilating with them, the Vikings helped shape centuries of history, and their legacy echoed through the medieval period. Yet defining when the Viking Age began and ended, exactly, is a difficult task with no simple answers. When was the Viking Age? The dates most typically given for the start and end of the Viking Age are 8 June AD 793 and 25 September 1066 – bookended by the raid on Lindisfarne and the Norman Conquest. These dates mark nearly three centuries of continuous Viking influence across much of Northern Europe, and beyond. But they also represent a limited, Anglocentirc perception of the Viking Age and how it unfolded. As Viking expert Dr Eleanor Barraclough explained on the HistoryExtra podcast, these dates do not tell the whole story. Norse activity in Europe started sooner than AD 793 and continued well after the Norman Conquest of 1066. A wider-ranging interpretation is that the era of Viking influence might have begun in the eighth century and ended as late as the 15th. When did the Viking Age begin? Traditionally the event that was said to launch the Viking Age in Europe was the raid on Lindisfarne in AD 793. As recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Norse warriors plundered the wealthy monastery, off the coast of the kingdom of Northumbria, and slaughtered many of those they found inside. The raid on Lindisfarne shook the Christian world. This was not only a calamity for the church in England, but across Europe: the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin was serving in the court of Charlemagne at the time and so helped spread the news. But it also marked the beginning of an intensification in Viking attacks, establishing their reputation as notorious, bloodthirsty heathens willing to desecrate religious sites and plunder coastal settlements in their hunger for wealth and territorial expansion. Read more | Old Norse poetry: how the Vikings viewed the world However, Dr. Barraclough notes that the Lindisfarne raid was just the latest example – albeit a headline-grabbing one – in a broader trend. "It's a very useful date, but we have to be aware that it's quite an Anglocentric one," she explains. In fact, Viking activity had been developing well before AD 793. “We have to have dates to anchor ourselves,” argues Dr Barraclough, “but at the same time, we have to be aware that those dates are imperfect, and they don't necessarily reflect the reality on the ground.” Evidence of Scandinavian expansion has been found dating to nearly half a century earlier than AD 793, including ship burials from around AD 750 on the island of Saaremaa in modern-day Estonia. These reveal that Vikings from the area near Stockholm had attempted to engage in diplomatic and trading missions in Eastern Europe, only to meet a violent end. When did the Viking Age end, and why? The most commonly used end date for the Viking Age is 25 September 1066 with the death of Norwegian king Harald Hardrada – the ‘last great Viking’ at the battle of Stamford Bridge. On 25 September of that year, just weeks before the battle of Hastings, the invading forces of Norwegian king Harald Hardrada were defeated by Harold Godwinson, the Anglo-Saxon king of England. Hardrada’s death saw the end of large-scale Norse invasions of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, which make the battle a fitting full stop on the Viking Age. Away from England, however, Viking activity continued across the continent. For instance, the islands of Orkney, off northern Scotland, remained a Norwegian colony until the 15th century. "You can take the Viking Age up to the 1400s if you're considering the Norse expansion into Greenland,” says Barraclough. Read more | A thousand years ago, the Vikings had a shock encounter with Native Americans that ended in disaster Elsewhere in Europe, a definable end date for the Viking Age becomes even harder to find. In the Slavic kingdoms are now part of Russia and Ukraine, Vikings settlers would become the Kievan Rus. Steadily, a distinct ‘Viking’ identity faded, giving way to a cultural melting pot of influences and assimilated peoples. Why the Viking Age might be longer than we think During the Viking Age, Norse populations occupied a vast geographical reach that spanned much of Europe, sandwiched between the extremities of North America and Eastern Eurasia. This could not be described as a single continuous territory, however. Instead, according to Dr Barraclough, it's critical to view the regions of Viking influence as "connected pockets" rather than a monolithic block. "There's a strong sense of shared identity within these pockets, but the character of Viking activity changed depending on where you were." In Britain and Ireland, Norse settlers left behind enduring legacies in cities like York and Dublin, while the Vikings in Normandy became the Northmen, or Normans. They integrated so thoroughly that the Norman Conquest of 1066 – which brought William the Conqueror to the throne of England – could be said to be partly a Viking invasion. On the eastern front, Scandinavian traders and warriors moved along the rivers of modern-day Russia and Ukraine, forging deep connections with the Slavic and Byzantine cultures. While in the North Atlantic, Viking ships sailed even further and established colonies in Iceland, Greenland and, briefly, in Vinland (now Newfoundland, Canada). The Vikings | A short course from HistoryExtra Academy Member exclusive | Join Professor Ryan Lavelle for our four-week course on the Viking period, covering everything from trading and raiding, to daily life. Explore the course now
Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs traces the life and legacy of the Native American interpreter famed for her involvement with the Lewis and Clark Expedition
Sacagawea is remembered in US history as the Shoshone Native American woman who acted as interpreter to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, the early 19th-century mission to chart territory in the American West after the Louisiana Purchase. But what impact did her contributions have on the success of this eventful journey? How did her presence influence interactions with the various Native American tribes the expedition party encountered? And how has her legacy been interpreted and commemorated in the years since? Speaking to Rebecca Franks, Stephenie Ambrose Tubbs delves into the life of Sacagawea – from what we know about her early years to what her story can reveal about broader cultural attitudes toward Indigenous people in American history.
How the compass became a political weapon
Jerry Brotton takes us on a journey through the unexpected history of the four cardinal directions
Why did early Islamic cartographers place south at the top of their maps? Who invented the magnetic compass? And why has 'the west' become an intensely political term, as well as a geographical one? Here, in conversation with Spencer Mizen, Jerry Brotton answers the most intriguing questions on the history of the four cardinal points: north, east, south and west. Jerry Brotton is the author of The Four Points of the Compass: The Unexpected History of Direction (Allen Lane, 2024). Buy it now from Amazon Hear more from Jerry Brotton on the life and legacy of extraordinary cartographer Marie Tharp
“Like ancient Greece, India is one of the seedbeds of civilisation” | William Dalrymple on putting India back at the centre of global history
Danny Bird talks to historian William Dalrymple about why we need a greater understanding of how Indian ideas and culture have shaped global history – a story too often obscured by colonial narratives
Danny Bird: Your book, The Golden Road, addresses the influence of ancient India on the myriad cultures and civilisations of Eurasia. What was it that attracted you to this topic? William Dalrymple: When I first arrived in India, aged 18, I visited the early Buddhist sites at Sanchi and Ajanta [which were at their peak in the first and fifth centuries AD, respectively], and was astonished by them. They were so sophisticated, yet created at a time when in Britain – including Scotland, where I’m from – there were Picts scratching symbols, and an Anglo-Saxon putting up a wobbly church tower. During the same period in India, beautiful murals were being painted in cave temples, and profound philosophies developed. As a teenager, I spent a lot of time on archaeological excavations in Scotland and England. I always thought I’d be an archaeologist, dealing with early history. I’m now on the verge of turning 60, and I think my teenage self would be very surprised to find that I ended up spending most of my adult life writing about the 18th century. That 18-year-old would be very disappointed in the middle-aged version ‘selling out’ to modern history and writing about India, which in my teens was way beyond my horizon. In fact, this is a period about which I’ve written before in From the Holy Mountain, which is set in the same monastic milieu [as Ajanta and Sanchi], though from a Mediterranean vantage. But for the past 20 years I’ve been writing about the East India Company and the Mughals, so this is my first non-Mughal book after two decades of research in that area. It feels very nice to be writing and thinking about a different topic, although there’s also that slight anxiety when you’re dealing with something that you don’t know so well. Read more | “This was a corporation that could topple kings”: William Dalrymple on the East India Company What do you hope readers will gain from reading this book? I wanted to have a very broad, wide-angle focus spanning over 1,000 years. Each of my previous four or five books was a micro-history of a couple of years in a single Indian city. This is a very different book, stretching from 250 BC to AD 1200, over a whole continent. It looks at the way that Indian ideas spread: first, with Buddhism going up through Tibet and central Asia to China, and then Hinduism going to south-east Asia. Notably, the largest Hindu temple in the world is not in India but in Cambodia – Angkor Wat, a Vishnu temple built in the 12th century. When I was halfway through my work on this book, the Berenike Buddha was discovered on Egypt’s Red Sea coast. This extraordinary statue, sculpted around the second century AD, was discovered at an ancient port where Indian traders were landing, highlighting the reach of Indian influence. Today, everyone’s waking up to the fact that India was, for most of history, the richest country in the world. Turning to mathematical numerals and the concept of zero, these came out of India, first to the Arab world, then passed on from there to Europe via the Italian mathematician Fibonacci in the early 13th century. We know these figures today as Arab numerals because we got them from the Arabs, but the Arabs got them from the Indians. Read more | Digital revolution: the evolution of Hindu-Arabic numerals My book makes the point that India is like ancient Greece, in that it’s one of the seedbeds of civilisation – but it has been totally eradicated from our consciousness and our education systems. This is surely a lingering legacy of colonialism and, more specifically, Victorian Indology, which undermined, misrepresented and devalued Indian history, culture, science and knowledge from the period when Thomas Babington Macaulay confidently proclaimed that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia”. If India were acknowledged to already have been a powerful, cosmopolitan and profoundly sophisticated civilisation, then what justification would there be for Victorian Britain’s civilising mission? How would you set out to bring civilisation to a part of the world that you recognised has been supremely civilised for thousands of years and which indeed was spreading its influence all over Asia long before the coming of Christianity? What is the ‘Golden Road’ of your book’s title? It’s an idea that is deliberately pitched in contrast with the concept of the Silk Road. My book argues that almost all intercontinental activity and trade during this period occurred by sea, with much less over land. This was primarily because of the hostile land borders separating the Roman world from Persia. One of the fortunate aspects of geography for India was the monsoon winds. These are predictable and regular, reversing directions every six months: they blow cold from the Tibetan Plateau in winter and warm from the south-west in summer. Once the monsoon winds were understood, sailors could travel efficiently from regions such as Kerala, Gujarat and the coast of Sindh to the Red Sea coast of Egypt or the Persian Gulf. Similarly, it was easy to sail across the Bay of Bengal to Thailand, Laos, the Mekong Delta, Cambodia and beyond to China. The ‘Golden Road’ refers to a trade route, mentioned by Strabo and Pliny the Elder around the time of the early Roman empire, that exported luxuries from southern India. Pliny disapproved of the expensive luxuries flowing into Rome at great cost, remarking that India was “the sink of the world’s precious metals”. This lucrative trade route brought significant amounts of Roman gold to India in the early centuries AD. Conversely, my colleague at All Souls College in Oxford, Andrew Wilson, who specialises in the history of the Roman economy, has estimated that possibly as much as one-third of the entire Roman military budget was powered by the customs take on the Red Sea ports. However, events such as the Justinianic Plague [from around AD 541] and raids by nomads such as the Blemmyes on southern Egypt led to the decline of this trade by the seventh century. This had consequences including curbing the arrival of garnets – which were popular in places like the Merovingian kingdoms and Anglo-Saxon England, where they were found at Sutton Hoo – from Rajasthan and Sri Lanka, signalling the end of this trade. You introduce the notion of an ‘Indosphere’. How did ancient India influence the lands and cultures beyond its territory? In India, the decline of its trade with Rome led to a crisis in gold supply. Although India had gold reserves, they hadn’t been fully discovered in the early centuries AD. As a result, Indian traders set off to Suvarnabhumi [a general term for south-east Asia], the ‘Lands of Gold’. This shift led to civilisational transformation in the region. Before that time, south-east Asia had no writing system. Suddenly, everyone there started using the Brahmi script, particularly the Tamil forms. Hinduism and Buddhism took root and produced even more dramatic monuments in that region than in India. The Khmer empire, with its million-strong urban population centred around Angkor Wat, produced the world’s largest Hindu temple. The most sophisticated Buddhist monument was built at in Java. Hindu forms of kingship and literature spread through out the region, and reminders of this influence endure to this day. The name of Thailand’s old capital, Ayutthaya, came from Rama’s kingdom in the Hindu epic Ramayana, for example. And Indonesia’s national airline is named Garuda, after Vishnu’s mount. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/marble-Buddha-body-found-in-2018-and-head-in-2022-d0b59ec-e1731335783128.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="The marble Berenike Buddha, carved around the second century and unearthed in Egypt, is the first Buddha statue found west of Afghanistan (Photo by E Sidebotham and S Poplawski)" title="The marble Berenike Buddha, carved around the second century and unearthed in Egypt, is the first Buddha statue found west of Afghanistan (Photo by E Sidebotham and S Poplawski)" /> The mythical battle of Kurukshetra, fought just north of Delhi, is depicted at Angkor Wat, along with images of Krishna cavorting with consorts and devotees in Mathura [that god’s traditional birthplace]. These ideas, originating from specific areas of India, were sculpted on a vast scale thousands of miles away. This was a fascinating moment in history, when south-east Asia became an extension of the Indian holy land. Even more dramatically, Indian ideas conquered China. In the 660s AD, Wu Zetian took power, becoming the only ‘female emperor’ in Chinese history. This was viewed as a dark period by the patriarchal Confucians. To bolster her power, Empress Wu imported Indian monks who proclaimed her to be the Bodhisattva Maitreya – the long-foretold future Buddha – giving her a divine right to rule, and Buddhism, an Indian faith, became the state religion of China for a time. That did not last, but it brought a massive wave of Indian ideas: literature, cosmology, mathematics and more. Though Chinese civilisation eventually rolled back some of these influences, Buddhism remained a significant presence. To this day, China has more Buddhists than any other country. Who are some of the other figures that you highlight? There’s a motley crew of murderous empresses, Buddhist wizards and tantric magicians. One of the first figures in the book is Saint Thomas – an unexpected presence. According to legend, he travelled the spice route between Berenike and Muziris [on India’s Malabar Coast], arriving in India as part of the Jewish merchant diaspora. He converted Brahmins (the priestly caste), built seven churches and was reputedly martyred in Mylapore [now part of Chennai] in AD 72. Though the legend is recorded in the Acts of Thomas, written around the turn of the third century, early conversion to Christianity in Kerala is documented from the second century, with Indian Christians seeking bishops, patriarchs and relics from Alexandria. One of my favourite figures is Vajrabodhi, a tantric wizard from the Pallava dynasty of Tamil south India – akin to a Buddhist Merlin. In the early eighth century, during a period when Buddhism was competing with Hinduism, Vajrabodhi – with his magical powers and Vajra staff, like a kind of magic wand – was sent on a diplomatic mission to Tang China. Detailed hagiographies describe his journey to Sri Lanka, a centre of tantric Buddhism, and his possible role in the construction of Borobudur, a monumental Buddhist site designed as a spiritual ‘power generator’ reflecting the void and nothingness central to tantric Buddhism. Another notable individual is the wandering Buddhist monk Xuanzang. He realised that the texts in his monasteries were corrupted and missing advanced tantric and Mahayana Buddhist scriptures, which were unavailable in China. Despite a travel ban imposed by Tang authorities, Xuanzang secretly went to India. There he spent 10 years at Nalanda, a renowned monastery equivalent to the Library of Alexandria with an exceptional educational institution, where he copied many manuscripts. Though some were lost on his return journey in a mishap while crossing the Indus river, he brought back enough to fill the Great Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi’an, which still stands today. Xuanzang’s generation faced prejudice against Indian learning, which was dismissed as ‘barbarian’ by the Confucian and Taoist elite. Buddhism in China peaked under Empress Wu, who was a spiritual follower of Xuanzang. She entered the imperial harem as the fifth concubine at the age of about 15, around the time Xuanzang returned from India, and the two became allies. Recognising her influence, Xuanzang regarded Wu as a key figure in advancing the Buddhist cause. Thus there was a growing awareness in China of India’s sophistication, driven largely by Buddhists who comprised one of several competing factions at court. How was ancient India’s cultural influence spread? Indian nationalism often promotes the idea of a ‘Greater India’, a concept popular with the current regime. This narrative suggests that the spread of Indian epics and gods throughout south-east Asia was the result of the actions of imperial warriors – an idea that gained traction in the 1930s with the Greater India Society. However, this notion seems unfounded. The spread of Indian culture was more likely driven by merchants and the appeal of Indian ideas, in much the same way as Hellenistic ideas spread to ancient Rome. Indian concepts in mathematics; architectural manuals such as the Shilpa Shastras; and jyotisa – a Sanskrit word encompassing both astronomy and astrology – spread widely. This happened not through conquest but via trade and the movements of Brahmins, who, despite legal restrictions, travelled across the Bay of Bengal. They brought with them ideas of Indian kingship and governance, influencing regions such as the Mekong Delta, Thailand and the Malay Peninsula. You’ve mentioned colonialism already, but are there any other reasons why ancient India’s impact on the history of human civilisation has been overlooked? I do think that the number one reason is colonialism. Britain went to India, conquered it and dismissed it as a barbaric civilisation. And the attitude I mentioned earlier – reflected in Macaulay’s disregard for India’s cultural sophistication – lingered. But in addition, history itself has been split up. The spread of Buddhism, Sanskrit and Arab numerals are treated as separate stories by different academics and museums. China, on the other hand, has done a better job of advancing its version of history, especially the romantic idea of the Silk Road. Read more | The chaotic conquest of India In my view, the Silk Road as an east–west phenomenon didn’t really exist until the Mongols punched an enormous hole through Eurasia, connecting the Mediterranean to the sea off China. This then enabled the likes of Marco Polo to travel with a single passport. Before that, trade was more of a relay, with goods gradually moving from one merchant to the next, sometimes taking 100 years to reach places such as Rome or Antioch from China. The idea of a single, ancient road connecting east and west simply wasn’t based in fact. India, as shown by a new map of the distribution of Roman coin hoards just published by Professor Wilson, was the primary long-distance trading partner of the Roman empire. Rome had only an extremely vague under standing of the location of China. This changed in the 13th century when the Mongols created a hostile border with India, effectively snapping the Golden Road. Then, as Persian intellectuals fled the Mongols and settled in Delhi from around the 13th century onwards, the cultural landscape of India shifted from a Sanskrit-speaking world to a Persianate one. India is on track to become a 21st-century superpower. Is this region predisposed to be a geopolitical and cultural powerhouse? Yes. It’s a great civilisation, with several unique traits. China was largely a single political unit throughout most of its history, though there were periods like the Warring States [c475–221 BC] when it fragmented. India, by contrast, experienced brief moments of unity under the Guptas, Mauryas and Mughals, but mostly remained a cultural unit divided into many small political fragments. When Xuanzang arrived in India, he described it as a region of 70 states bounded by the ocean and the Himalayas. India doesn’t share China’s history of centralisation but has always had a strong sense of itself as a civilisation, a geographical unit and a spiritual centre, as evident in its earliest literature. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/11/J47ND1web-7dbd217-e1731335656408.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A painting of the monk Xuanzang, who went to India to copy Buddhist texts. Such travellers returning to medieval China increased awareness of India’s sophistication (Photo by The History Collection/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="A painting of the monk Xuanzang, who went to India to copy Buddhist texts. Such travellers returning to medieval China increased awareness of India’s sophistication (Photo by The History Collection/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> India, like Greece, has always been one of the places where humanity’s fundamental questions have been addressed: what are we doing here? Why are we here? How should we live? How do we count? How do we pray? What’s the point of life? Over half of the world’s population today lives in countries that were influenced by Indian religion and philosophy, including China, Japan, Korea, Mongolia and Siberia. Despite this, the European perspective on civilisation overwhelmingly focuses on ancient Greece, overlooking India’s contributions. As far as we do know about India, we tend to know about the Mughals or the British in India. We don’t learn in our schools about the civilisations of ancient India. This book aims to correct that omission, placing India back at the centre of global history. India has almost always been one of the world’s richest areas, alternating with China as the wealthiest. By the end of this century, India is expected to be one of the three largest economies, alongside the US and China. And it’s time we learned this stuff. We need to know this stuff. It’s a whole chapter of high civilisation that colonialism removed from the curriculum – and it’s time to put it back. William Dalrymple is a historian, broadcaster, writer and cultural critic. He is currently a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. He is the author of The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World (Bloomsbury, 2024) This article was first published in the November 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
The invisible tracks that have shaped the world
Sara Caputo explains how the lines drawn across oceans throughout history can reveal stories of power, exploration and conquest
Each ocean voyage through history has laid down a track that tells a story. These invisible pathways across the seas can reveal how the world has been shaped by power, conquest and exploration. Dr Sara Caputo tells Elinor Evans more about how lines on a map can have real-world consequences. Sara Caputo is the author of Tracks on the Ocean: A History of Trailblazing, Maps and Maritime Travel (Profile Books, 2024) Buy now on Bookshop.org Buy now on Amazon <a href="https://www.awin1.com/cread.php?id=489797&clickref=historyextra-276727&awinmid=3787&p=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.waterstones.com%2Fbook%2Ftracks-on-the-ocean%2Fsara-caputo%2F9781788168823%23%3A%7E%3Atext%3DTracks%2520on%2520the%2520Ocean%253A%2520A%2CMaps%2520and%2520Maritime%2520Travel%2520%28Hardback%29%26text%3DFrom%2520their%2520first%2520appearance%2520on%2Cwhat%2520is%2520their%2520deeper%2520meaning%253F#:~:text=Tracks%20on%20the%20Ocean%3A%20A,Maps%20and%20Maritime%20Travel%20(Hardback)&text=From%20their%20first%20appearance%20on,what%20is%20their%20deeper%20meaning%3F" rel="sponsored" target="_blank">Buy now on Waterstones
North, south, east and west: how ancient civilisations found their bearings before the compass
Why did the ancient Chinese associate north with power? What led early Muslims to pray to the south? And what role did winds have to play in our understanding of directions? Jerry Brotton takes us on a journey through the history of the four points of the compass
Writing in his philosophical work the New Organon in 1620, the English scientist and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon famously identified China’s three great inventions, “which were unknown to the ancients, and of which the origin, though recent, is obscure and inglorious; namely printing, gunpowder and the magnet. For these three have changed the whole face and state of things throughout the world.” Much has been written about the historical impact of printing and gunpowder. But there’s been far less emphasis on the magnet, and how (using lodestones to magnetise iron needles) it enabled the ‘obscure’ invention of the magnetic compass during the Han dynasty in the third century BC. This technology enabled China and, subsequently, other societies to navigate and orientate themselves according to the four points of the compass: north, east, south and west. We tend to think about these directions and the art of navigation as a consequence of the invention of the compass, but this is not in fact the case. The ancient history of direction and its relationship to the magnetic compass is altogether more surprising. How ancient civilisations understood east and west Thousands of years before the discovery of the compass, early human societies observed the sun rising in the direction we now call ‘east’ and watched it setting in the direction now known as ‘west’. East to west was probably the earliest prime axis that people understood by simply watching the sun’s path across the sky. The worship of the sun, or heliolatry, characterised ancient Egyptian worship of solar gods: Horus (the rising sun), Ra (the noon sun) and Osiris (the dying or setting sun). Read more | Sun gods and goddesses: 16 solar deities from world history This initial east-west solar axis was gradually followed by the understanding of another axis. This one ran vertically from north to south, and could be identified by observing the sun and stars. At noon the sun is always due south in the northern hemisphere and due north in the southern hemisphere. Living in the northern hemisphere, you can also look up at the stars and find north according to Polaris, the North or Pole Star. If you live in the southern hemisphere, that direction is identified by Polaris Australis, the South Star. The four cardinal directions By combining the two axes – east-west horizontally and north-south vertically – ancient societies created the basic framework for what we now call the four cardinal directions. The word ‘cardinal’ comes from the Latin cardinalis, which can mean something (or someone) of fundamental importance. That’s why, in the Roman Catholic church, it refers to a priest ranking beneath only the pope. The names for these four directions were inspired by the human body: our front and back, left and right, even top and bottom. In many ancient languages, ‘front’ and ‘back’ are synonymous with east and west. In Hebrew, east – qedem or mizrach – also means ‘forward’ or ‘front’, while ‘west’ – achor – is a synonym for ‘behind’. In ancient Chinese, the pictograph for north, bĕi, represents two people back to back. The dark and cold north is synonymous with the ‘back’ of the body, while the ‘front’ looks southwards (nán), in the direction of light and warmth. The earliest surviving record that we know of that names the four cardinal directions was inscribed on a clay tablet during the first great Mesopotamian empire, the Akkadian dynasty (c2350–2150 BC). It is a rudimentary topographical map known as the ‘Gasur map’, showing an agricultural estate. At the top left is IM-kur, ‘east’; at the bottom left is IM-mar-tu, ‘west’; and to the centre left IM-mir, ‘north’. The prefix ‘IM’ refers to winds, not astronomical observations. Other Mesopotamian texts describe four principal winds forming a diagonal cross, equivalent to the modern directions of north-west, north-east, south-east and south-west. When the cuneiform text on the map is read from top to bottom, IM-mir, the direction from which the regular north-western winds blow, is the prime orientation. What this shows is that the farmers cultivating the land more than 4,000 years ago understood the four cardinal directions in terms of wind direction and changeable climatic conditions. Why? Because they were crucial for the cultivation of crops and could mean the difference between feast and famine. The importance of the winds Ancient Greek philosophy and science inherited the Mesopotamian preoccupation with winds. Mythical personifications of the four directions as gods first appear in the ancient works of Homer (c800 BC). His celebrated epic poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, both mention four deities representing cardinal winds. Boreas, the north wind, is possibly an archaic variant of ‘mountains’ or ‘roaring’. Notos, the south wind, derives from ‘moist’. Eurus, the east wind, comes from the ‘brightness’ of sunrise. The western wind of Zephyrus stems from the ‘gloom’ of sunset. Later Greek philosophers offered a more naturalistic account of direction. Aristotle’s Meteorology (c350 BC) includes the earliest known geometrical diagram of cardinal directions according to wind systems, depicting eight principal winds in his conception of the Earth. Listen | Roderick Beaton picks out the key moments in 4,000 years to explore how the Greeks changed the world The Romans adopted many of the Greek terms for directions based on winds, and introduced some new Latin words. North came first, named borealis or septentriones, a reference to the ‘seven stars’ of Ursa Major (which appears to rotate around the northern star, Polaris). South was given several new terms, including australis (‘harsh’ or ‘sharp’ – thanks to the harsh heat and hot, sharp winds) or meridionalis (from ‘midday’). West was occidentalis (‘falling’ or ‘passing away’) and east was orientalis (‘rising’ or ‘originating’, as in the sun). So, when we speak of being ‘disoriented’, we are literally saying we are unable to find the east. The role of Judaism and Christianity These ideas and terms were accepted until the ninth century, when a radical change took place that changed the names of the cardinal directions. This happened under Charlemagne (748–814), emperor of much of the northern part of Europe. In attempting to unify the continent, Charlemagne initiated many political, economic and educational reforms. This included abandoning winds as a means of classifying directions and renaming the four directions using proto-Germanic words, derived from Indo-European roots. Nord (north) came from the proto-Indo-European term, nórto-s – ‘lower’, or to the ‘left’ (of the rising sun looking east). Est (east) drew on the Indo-European austo-s – ‘light’ or ‘shine’ (as in the morning). Sund (south) derived from an archaic term for the sun, sú-n-to-s, referring to the south as the direction of the midday sun. Oëst (west) took its name from the proto-Indo-European uestos with its many meanings of the evening, including red (as in the setting sun). Versions of these words are now recognisable in most modern European vernacular languages. The impact of these evolving ideas of the cardinal directions underpinned early theological belief across various cultures. Jewish and Christian theology revered the east as the prime cardinal direction of worship and celebration. The story begins in Genesis: God “planted a garden eastward in Eden” (Genesis 2:8). The messiah’s second coming is predicted as arriving from the east, “For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be” (Matthew 24:27). Mizrach, or east, thus became the Jewish direction of prayer. Early Christianity expanded the Jewish mizrach by developing the Latin term Ad orientem – ‘to the east’ – to understand east as its sacred direction. The idea can be seen on medieval Christian maps, such as the mappa mundi housed in Hereford Cathedral. Here the cardinal directions are represented on its outer ring from the top, moving clockwise, from oriens (east), meridiens (south), occidens (west) to septentrio (north). The Garden of Eden is shown at the top, then time flows downwards through images of Old Testament empires, the birth of Christ and the rise of Rome, with Jerusalem at the centre. It ends at the westernmost point of Gibraltar at the bottom of the map. The differences of early Islamic maps Where east sat at the top of early Christian maps for theological reasons, on many early Islamic maps south was the prime direction. This was because most of the societies that first converted to Islam lived directly north of Mecca. As a result, believers prayed due south, a practice that oriented their world maps accordingly. On a map dated 1297 (copied from the 10th-century geographer Muhammad al-Istakhri), the world is oriented with south at the top. Africa is a claw extending deep into the Indian Ocean, and the vertical bar running from top right downwards is the Nile, flowing into the Mediterranean with three islands: Cyprus, Crete and Sicily. Europe is shown below, including Muslim Spain (al-Andalus). The map’s finest detail lies at the heart of the Muslim empire, whose various administrative districts are demarcated in red. Arabia sits in the centre of the map with the holy sites of Mecca and Medina. Why China put north at the top While east and south defined the theological directions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in China north sat at the top of their world maps, hundreds of years before Europe adopted such a convention. In Chinese belief, the emperor was the ‘Son of Heaven’, the earthly manifestation of the supreme deity inhabiting the Pole Star. The emperor looked ‘down’ south on his subjects from an elevated position on high in the north, while they looked ‘up’ northwards to him. ‘South’ (nan) was expressed in its pictograph as a liana plant, evoking the luxuriant vegetation of the south as viewed from the drier, colder northern latitudes. But north remained the direction from which imperial power and authority emanated. Read more | Has China always been the world’s greatest superpower? For centuries, China was a global leader in the technology of navigation – and it was only in the 12th century that the magnetic compass started to appear in the Mediterranean for use in navigation. How these compasses moved west is still unclear. But they were decisive in enabling Christian navigators to develop sailing charts known as ‘portolans’ to navigate across, first, the Mediterranean, and then the Atlantic and Indian oceans. Maps of European exploration Yet though their explorations were facilitated by a Chinese technology, Europe an explorers didn’t initially follow the Chinese convention of placing north at the top of their maps. Eight years after Christopher Columbus’s momentous voyage to the Americas in 1492–93, Juan de la Cosa, owner of Columbus’s flagship, La Santa María, drew a map showing the new ‘discoveries’ in the west. The writing on the map suggests that it should be oriented with west at the top – one of the few world maps to ever privilege ‘west’ as its cardinal direction. The west briefly became the cardinal direction – until European scholars, who tended to revere the classics, chose to mimic the ancient Greek practice of placing north at the top. Juan de la Cosa’s map also features a ‘compass rose’ in the middle of the Atlantic, a symbol of the key role that the instrument was to play in the coming centuries. Soon, with the European age of discovery gathering momentum, the magnetic compass would well and truly triumph. Many of us may have naturally assumed that the compass gave us the words we use for the cardinal directions – north and south, east and west. Yet, as the long and colourful history of our relationship with orientation and navigation proves, it was the other way round. This article was first published in the October 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Eastern promises: the long and troubled history of Britain's relations with China
Lured by rich trading prospects, Britain attempted numerous times to cultivate relations with China from the 17th to the 19th centuries. Sometimes, they were successful; often, the attempts ended disastrously. Kerry Brown explores the difficult but ultimately vital links between two ambitious realms
China may feel like an exotic destination to many Britons – far distant and undeniably other, culturally and politically. Yet China’s influence permeates our daily lives. It was where we originally sourced tea, the first advert for which appeared in London as early as 1658. It was where the technology for making porcelain came from, inspiring the likes of Josiah Wedgwood and Josiah Spode. It was where a huge number of flowers now flourishing in our gardens were first found, collected by botanists and explorers from the 18th century onwards. And it has, of course, produced so much of the technology that today fills and powers our homes. Often unappreciated and sometimes tucked out of sight, China’s contributions to British life today are nonetheless tangible – and largely positive. As these examples show, links between the two nations go back centuries. And, despite the fractious tone of the political relationship today, coloured by arguments about Hong Kong, human rights and espionage, much of that history involved people from both places discovering, appreciating and learning from each other. When did the English first make contact with China? The first English efforts to make formal contact with China came during the reign of Elizabeth I, who sent letters to the Chinese imperial court proposing trade. “We are borne and made to have need one of another, and that we are bound to aide one another,” the queen wrote in one missive. None of her letters ever arrived, but China remained on the minds of English traders and merchants. And the East India Company, established in 1599–1600, made launching trade with the far east a key priority. Read more | The voices of China: 5 perspectives on an extraordinary past One of the earliest recorded incidents between the nations relates to an argument in Bantam, west of what’s now Jakarta on the island of Java. A disgruntled trader, Edmund Scott, blamed his Chinese neighbour for a fire that blazed in his warehouse in May 1604. In a horrific description, he recounts how he took hot irons and pincers to the accused man, who nonetheless refused to confess – and was executed. “Between our men and the Hollanders, they shot him almost all to pieces before they left him,” Scott declared. Unfortunately, such violence was the norm in that early era of contact. Britain, seeking new sources of wealth in the 17th and early 18th centuries, was eager to muscle in on the eastern markets and mysterious ancient lands of the Ming and, from 1644, Qing empires. These great realms were known to be places where spices, silk and other great riches might be found. However, China was largely closed to outsiders. Who was allowed to work in China? The only Europeans permitted to work there were Jesuits, and even they were ordered to leave in the 1720s. Most who engaged with China were not scholars or statespeople but sailors, traders and adventurers who had little time for the niceties of cultural empathy or building trust. In 1637, English captain John Weddell sailed to the south China coast, where he was met with resistance, which turned violent. Eventually, local officials ordered Weddell and his ships to leave and never return. Peter Mundy, a trader and diarist on that voyage, left accounts of people using chopsticks and drinking a strange infusion he called ‘chaa’ (tea); he also wrote that “there are more people on the water than in the land”. In 1720, Scottish surgeon and diplomat John Bell tagged along with a Russian delegation to “the celestial empire” of Qing. There he encountered a stretch of the Great Wall of China, reporting that: “Running from one high rock to another, with square towers at certain intervals, even at this distance, [it] is most magnificent.” After an audience with the Kangxi Emperor – who had been on the Chinese throne for almost six decades since 1661, when he was just six years old – Bell commented on “the good nature and affability of this ancient monarch”. How much business did the Chinese permit? In the mid-18th century, East India Company merchants were finally allowed to conduct business in China, but in only one place: the port of Canton, today’s Guangzhou, on the Pearl river delta in the far south near Hong Kong. The British were frustrated by this restriction, because the goods they felt would be most worthwhile trading in China – woollen garments – were more suitable to the distant northern regions, and not so readily saleable in the balmy south. In 1759, James Flint was sent on an illegal mission to Qing authorities in Tianjin, aiming to get restrictions lifted to allow British merchants to trade in other locations in China. He delivered a translation of his request to government offices – an act that was viewed dimly by Chinese authorities. Flint was arrested, sent back to Canton, imprisoned in Macau for three years and then ordered to leave the country, never to return. It could have been worse; the Chinese man who translated his request was executed. Clearly, dialogue in those early decades of contact and trade was not always straightforward. But the enquiring nature of some Britons drove them to seek pathways into even the most remote areas. Read more | What was traded on the Silk Road? Having heard reports of trade possibilities with Tibet, then essentially under the control of Qing China, in 1774 Warren Hastings, governor-general of Bengal, despatched a young Scottish official, George Bogle, to investigate. Bogle’s wonderful account provides a superb example of benevolent curiosity, cultural understanding and empathy. He wondered, for example, at the system of polyandry – in which a woman may have several husbands – practised by the Tibetans: men, he commented, “club together in matrimony as merchants do in trade”. He also built a warm relationship with the Panchen Lama – the second most senior religious leader in Tibet, after the Dalai Lama – who promised to intercede for the British on an imminent visit to Beijing. The mission achieved some limited and temporary commercial gains, but it was another century and a quarter before Britain finally gained trading access to Tibet – using force, not diplomacy, during the British expedition of 1903/04. How important was tea to British and Chinese relations? By the end of the 18th century, Britain was importing vast quantities of tea from China. At first, most was sourced from secondary markets; it was heavily taxed, and smuggling was rife, so more formal connections were needed. In the 1780s, prime minister Pitt the Younger asked his chief confidant, Henry Dundas, to arrange the first-ever government-led mission to China. An initial attempt in 1788 under Charles Allan Cathcart ended prematurely when he died soon after his ship left Britain. Then, in 1792, George Macartney – formerly an ambassador to the Russian court of Catherine the Great and a colonial governor in India – was selected to lead another delegation. He set off with a fleet of ships, one of them laden with gifts to impress the Chinese. Read more | The Great Tea Race of 1866 Macartney’s mission marked one of the great moments of modern history. Described by some as a clash of civilisations, it brought the world’s fastest-industrialising and modernising country face to face with one of the oldest continuous cultures. Macartney was joined by William Alexander, an artist from Kent who produced beautiful sketches of the Chinese coast, and George Staunton, whose young son learned Chinese over the course of the mission and charmed the Qianlong Emperor with a few words in Mandarin. Botanists and scientists were also on board. Macartney’s venture failed in its main aim – opening up trade across China. But it did accrue a vast amount of knowledge about a realm the British had been trying to penetrate for almost two centuries, but about which they understood little. Macartney was just one of several men who wrote accounts about the trip. Another complained bitterly about the food, much like grumbling tourists today do worldwide. Some were amazed by Chinese architecture: the account of the overland journey back from Beijing to Canton by John Barrow, Macartney’s secretary, includes descriptions of the Porcelain Tower of Nanjing and the old bridges of Suzhou. Indeed, the antiquity of China impressed many. What attempts were made to understand the Chinese language? The language and writing, so different from European scripts, represented another source of fascination. Members of the Royal Society tasked the Macartney delegation with trying to establish whether Chinese was similar to Egyptian hieroglyphics – an idea that had first surfaced in a 1660s work claiming Noah’s Ark had landed in China after the biblical floods. British understanding of Chinese languages was improved hugely thanks to the work of the greatest sinologist Britain has ever produced. Robert Morrison was a Protestant missionary sent to China in 1807 to convert the so-called ‘heathens’ to Christianity, but he proved more successful in linguistics. He compiled the first Chinese-to-English dictionary, published from 1815, then translated the Bible into Chinese. These extraordinary achievements were, of course, possibly only in collaboration with Chinese people who helped him despite stern edicts forbidding such cooperation. Morrison’s work demonstrated the potential for a deeper kind of understanding and appreciation of China. Yet the century that followed reinforced the old adage: familiarity tended to breed contempt rather than deeper affinity. How did the British react to Chinese culture? In the second half of the 18th century, Britain had been in the thrall of all things Chinese, from wallpaper to building design; a new word, ‘chinoiserie’, was even coined to describe such fashions. That fascination was then replaced by a view of China as a backward country – buried in tradition, isolated from the wider world and unwilling to engage. This perception of a fading empire was reinforced by the writing of John Barrow, who had been attached to the first British embassy to China. He suggested sourly in his 1804 account that it was a nation “worn out with old age and disease”. Read more | When pirates ruled Asia's waves Still, Britain made efforts to grow closer to China, in 1834 sending its first formal representative, the unfortunate Lord Napier, appointed chief superintendent of trade at Canton. At the time, the relationship between China and Britain was largely dominated by traders such as Scotsmen William Jardine and James Matheson, who gleefully set out to exploit the opportunity that opened up when the East India Company’s monopoly on British-Chinese trade was ended in 1833. Napier proved unpopular with the British residents in China, who felt that he was too soft on the locals, but also the Chinese, who resolutely opposed his attempts to speak not just to the designated traders but also to officials directly. His situation was typical of those experienced by many emissaries and diplomats since then. Napier was turfed out of Canton only a few months after his arrival, and died soon afterwards. Did Britain and China go to war? It wasn’t long before Sino-British relations deteriorated into full-scale conflict. Known to the Chinese as the Opium Wars, these were in fact not primarily about the drug, though vast quantities were being imported into China from India by the British with the aim of correcting the trade imbalance created by the export of tea and other goods. The first war, fought 1839–42, was sparked by the arrival in Canton of an assertive official, Lin Zexu, sent from Beijing – to the horror of Napier’s successor, Charles Elliot. Lin’s mandate was to stop the contraband trade in opium, and he proceeded to impound goods, imprison foreign merchants associated with the trade, and generally rid the country of what was regarded as a debilitating scourge. Plenty of people in Britain were sympathetic to this Chinese response to the trade. These included William Gladstone, who made a rousing speech in the House of Commons defending the Chinese for their actions. Read more | What caused the First Opium War? Elliot himself was dismissed for what was perceived as a lack of aggression and decisiveness. His dispatches from the final weeks of his time in post often acknowledged that, in some respects at least, the Chinese may have had the right to take the actions they did. However, Britain had the will – and the means – to gain what it wanted. That, in the end, dictated everything else. This war – really a series of skirmishes that ended in total victory for Britain, thanks to the superiority of its military technology and navy – left a searing mark on the Chinese. It is remembered in China today as the start of the so-called ‘century of humiliation’. The Treaty of Nanjing that ended the war achieved the real aims of figures such as the British foreign secretary, Viscount Palmerston. Their concerns were not so much about the drug trade per se, but the general lack of access for British business in China; barriers preventing foreign officials from speaking directly to the Chinese government; and, primarily, the sense that Britain’s status as a great power was not being recognised by China. As well as addressing these issues, the treaty ceded Hong Kong to the British. Who were key figures in Sino-British relations in the 19th century? British involvement in China reached its peak in the mid-19th century, an era encapsulated in the actions of three figures. The first was maverick botanist Robert Fortune, who was involved in perhaps the most audacious act of intellectual property theft ever committed. Masquerading as a Chinese traveller, in the 1850s he stole tea plants and devised a way to grow them in British-run India – which is why so much tea drunk in Britain today originates from India. The second key character at that time was the strange mystic Charles Gordon, who had participated in the looting of the Summer Palace by British and French forces in 1860, during the Second Opium War. He turned up again in 1863 to lead a group of foreign mercenaries, nicknamed the Ever Victorious Army, during the so-called Taiping Rebellion, a civil war that had been convulsing the country for 13 years. The third of these influential British figures, Robert Hart, achieved a different kind of fame. From 1863, he ran the Imperial Maritime Customs – a unique system responsible not just for collecting import duties for the Chinese government, but also for establishing infrastructure such as lighthouses and for collecting statistics. Hart, the highest-ranking British person to serve as a Chinese official, maintained that position till 1911, by which time he was responsible for close to a third of the Qing’s revenue. Read more | Has China always been the world’s greatest superpower? Just as Britain has been influenced by these interactions, so too was China. It was introduced to key technologies, belief systems and processes of modernity, from railways to ideas around administration and finance, largely through British companies, officials or individuals. Neither country would be the kind of place it is today without these three centuries of early engagement. That needs to be more wider recognised today, particularly in a time when there are such sharp disagreements between the two over values, rights and ideas of global order. The situation changed as China became open on the world stage throughout the 20th century. The US, Japan and other powers grew more influential, and Britain’s role slowly receded. Hong Kong became the key focus, with colonial rule there maintained till 1997. Yet even today, in the 21st century, China ranks as among Britain’s largest and most important trading and economic partners. As we’ve seen, links between the two go back centuries – and their impacts on one another have been profound. Kerry Brown is professor of Chinese studies at King’s College London, and author of The Great Reversal: Britain, China and the 400-Year Contest for Power (Yale University Press, 2024) This article was first published in the September 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine