Empire: World History

From India to Africa, the involvement and influence of Scots in the British Empire has been profound. In both arenas, they rose through the ranks as soldiers, merchants and bureaucrats, to carve out, ...

The extraordinary lives of three Scotsmen - John Henderson, Richard Oswald, and David Livingstone - encapsulate the polarities of the Scottish experience in Africa prior to the 20th century. Henderson...

In the wake of Culloden, much of Scotland was on its knees. Crippled by defeat and the subsequent backlash of the British government, along with famine and poverty, they were in dire need of new horiz...

Few battles in history have been remembered as powerfully, nor been as mythologised, as Culloden on the 16th of April 1746. Under the leadership of Charles Edward Stuart - Bonnie Prince Charlie, ‘the ...

In 1688 the Stuart King James II was ousted from the throne by his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange, in what is called the Glorious Revolution. This momentous change would set in motion...

With the accession of James I and VI in 1603, Scotland was assimilated into the composite monarchy of the United Kingdom. James, an eccentric, insecure and rambling figure, preoccupied with witches, w...

When charting the rise of Scotland’s global influence, few events have been as tragically remarkable as the Darien Scheme of 1698, which saw woefully unprepared Scottish pioneers attempt to settle and...

In the 9th century AD, two years after the Holy Roman Empire was established in Western Christendom, another world-shaking empire was rising in the east, more powerful even than that of Charlemagne an...

While in the West the legends of King Arthur were being born, a Buddhist tantric magician of immense magical powers - Vajrabodhi - was enshrining himself as the Merlin of first India, and then China. ...

India’s transformation of the ancient world is indisputable, and tangible evidence of this can be found in the magnificent Hindu and Buddhist temples scattered across the landscapes of South East Asia...