British rule in India wasn’t deliberate—it developed from trade

A British trade corporation toppled the Mughal Empire

This History Extra feature explains how the East India Company—armed with royal backing, taxation rights, and military force—expanded from a trading venture into a corporate power that overtook the Mughal Empire and laid the foundations of British colonial rule in India.

British colonialism left economic institutions that still shape growth today

This analysis argues that while the British Empire inflicted exploitation and long-term harm, it also exported institutions—like standardized property rights and land surveying—that boosted economic development in some colonies.

Britain extracted nearly $45T from India during colonial rule

Between 1765 and 1938, Britain drained an estimated $45T in today’s dollars from India through taxes, resource extraction, and coerced trade—wealth that helped Britain’s economic rise while contributing to widespread poverty in the colony.

A trading company became Britain's most powerful imperial force

The East India Company began as a private merchant venture and grew into Britain’s dominant power in India—amassing wealth, fielding armies, and governing tens of millions until the Crown took direct control in 1858.

The British Empire, explained

This three-minute 1440 explainer traces the rise of the British Empire, which at its height ruled nearly one in four people—about 500 million—and spanned so many regions that admirers called it “the empire on which the sun never sets.”

See a data visualization of the East India Company's trade

This tool visualizes the East India Company’s trade from 1760 to 1834, letting you track shipments of tea, textiles, metals, and more. Users can sort by commodity, origin, destination, and date to see London’s vast imperial supply network that shaped the British Empire.

A podcast deep dive into the British Empire and India

Season 1 of this acclaimed UK podcast, hosted by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand, delves into the East India Company, the Raj, Gandhi, and the forces that shaped—and ultimately unraveled—British rule in India.

See how Britain promoted imperial trade through 1920s propaganda posters

This photo gallery showcases posters from the Empire Marketing Board, created after Canada gained dominion status in 1926. The campaign encouraged Canadians to buy goods from across the British Empire, producing more than 800 posters displayed nationwide.

European colonization dramatically reshaped Native American life

As European settlers expanded across North America, Native Americans faced displacement, violence, and forced negotiations. Colonial powers used trade relationships, treaties, and military force to reshape Indigenous communities and claim their territories.

The popular myth behind the India pale ale

Legend has it that the beer style earned its name in the late 1700s and early 1800s, when one brewer realized he had to add more alcohol and hops to his beers to survive the long boat ride to India. But as this essay by one beer historian makes clear, the facts don't line up with that myth.

Hong Kong: British colony turned Chinese police state

This 15-minute video explores how Hong Kong has changed since China reclaimed the territory from Britain in 1997. Hong Kong became a British colony after the First Opium War, a conflict arising from Britain's attempt to equalize trade with China through smuggled opium. Democratic rights assumed by Hong Kong residents, such as the right to protest, have been in peril since the 1997 shift, according to this video.

The British Royal Navy—not the US military—enforced the Monroe Doctrine for most of the 19th century

In the early to mid-1800s, the US lacked the ships and military power to prevent European nations from colonizing the Americas. Britain enforced this to protect its commercial interests by keeping rival European powers out of Latin America.

A rush to invest in British rail in the 1840s led to investor ruin

During “Railway Mania,” speculative excitement pushed British rail shares to extreme valuations as investors chased rapid expansion. When costs ballooned and profits failed to materialize, the bubble collapsed in 1847—wiping out fortunes across the country.

Chess traces its roots to chaturanga in sixth-century India

The earliest form of chess, known as chaturanga, emerged in India around the sixth century. The game simulated four divisions of the military—infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariots—and laid the foundation for modern chess’ structure and strategy.

Cholera went global thanks to global trade

The first cholera pandemic grew from an outbreak in India, in 1817. Scientists suggest it spread from there throughout the continent and onward to Africa, Russia and Europe through the poop of traders.

Great Zimbabwe: the massive medieval trading hub in southern Africa

Arising during the 13th century, the Kingdom of Zimbabwe’s capital quickly grew into a central trading hub, dealing in items from across the world, before its decline in the 1400s. Great Zimbabwe had three distinct districts, each surrounded by...

Learn about the violent history of the nutmeg industry

From the 1600s to the 1860s, the Dutch East India Company enslaved thousands of people on the Banda Islands, the world's only nutmeg source, forcing them to work on plantations under a system unlike anything seen in the Caribbean or American South.

How Orwell's time in Myanmar influenced his writing

Orwell joined the Indian Imperial Police in Myanmar (then Burma, a British colony) in 1922, at 19. In her introduction for Orwell's debut novel, "Burmese Days," Emma Larkin unpacks how Orwell's five years working there shaped the book and informed his politics, especially his negative view of colonialism.

Ukraine came under Russian imperial rule in the late 18th century

After centuries of division among neighboring powers, most of present-day Ukraine was absorbed into the Russian Empire by the late 1700s, marking the beginning of a long period of imperial control and cultural suppression.

Money—not land—became Europe’s key economic driver in the Middle Age

During the medieval commercial revolution, money gradually replaced land as the primary economic commodity. Expanding trade, markets, and finance transformed Europe’s economy—laying foundations, historians argue, that were essential for the later Industrial Revolution.

The role of textiles in South Asian art

Textiles play an essential role in the religious traditions of the Indian subcontinent, acting as portable shrines that can relay important allegories and depict spiritual iconography. This primer from Smarthistory breaks down how imagery is used on these textiles and helpfully provides high-quality images, allowing you to witness their beauty for yourself.

Some argue that Queen Victoria's wedding started the ripple effect that led to the modern-day wedding-industrial complex

This Vogue article takes you inside the details of Queen Victoria's nuptials, from the dress to the bridesmaids drama. Learn all about the wedding that changed the wedding industry forever.

US immigrants shifted from primarily originating in Ireland and Germany to Mexico and India

This visualization tracks the top country of birth among US immigrants by state from 1850 to the present, revealing a dramatic shift from European-dominated immigration to today's prominence of Mexican and Indian immigrants.

The reservation system gives tribes limited self-governance while keeping them under federal control

Federal law designates Native nations as "domestic dependent nations"—a legal category that recognizes limited tribal sovereignty while subordinating tribes to federal authority. This ambiguous status, introduced by Chief Justice John Marshall's 1831 opinion in Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, has shaped conflicts over land and governance ever since.

Trade and tariffs in the Roman world

Trade between nations and empires date back thousands of years, including the use of tariffs to raise government revenue.

Trace how the Bill of Rights, inspired by centuries of political theory, took shape between 1774 and 1789.

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Stanford built a Google Maps for the Roman Empire, revealing how much it cost to travel in the ancient world

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

The term 'algorithm' originated from the Latinized name of al-Khwārizmī, a 9th-century mathematician whose works introduced Arabic numerals and the decimal-based numeral system to Europe and whose treatise 'Al-Jabr' gave algebra its name.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

For centuries, it was common to sleep in two shifts: a few hours at the beginning of the night, and a longer period beginning around midnight

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

See the evolution of Ebola vaccine and treatment development.

Some coin denominations have ridges etched on their sides, partly to prevent counterfeiting, in a practice called 'reeding.'

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

Poison ivy's characteristic rash is caused by an allergic response to an oily compound in the plant called urushiol.

Some Pokémon have been named after real and fictional organisms, while some real-world species have been named after Pokémon, such as Chilicola charizard and Binburrum zapdos.

Play the role of a student in a game where you try to navigate college and remain debt-free, selecting different income levels, high school experience, race, ethnicity, and more.

'Shogun,' a 1980s TV series, helped popularize sushi in the US by stimulating an American interest in Japanese culture.

Electrical grids worldwide must double their power delivery capacity by 2050 to meet surging demand from AI and electric vehicles.

Art theft is the third-largest source of criminal revenues worldwide, thanks in part to the subjective nature of valuing a work of art.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is independent of Iran's regular army and is one of the most powerful and influential military-political organizations in the Middle East.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'