Bengal: Did you mean...?

A c. 1760 map showing the positions at the battle of Plassey in Bengal, India, 23 June 1757. Robert Clive’s East India Company army defeated a larger force of the Nawab of Bengal.

The Industrial Revolution saw a wave of technological and social changes in many countries of the world in the 18th and 19th centuries, but it began in Britain for a number of specific reasons. Britain...

One of the major motivating factors in the European Age of Exploration was the search for direct access to the highly lucrative Eastern spice trade. In the 15th century, spices came to Europe via the Middle...

Admiral Zheng He (aka Cheng Ho, c. 1371-1433 CE) was a Chinese Muslim eunuch explorer who was sent by the Ming dynasty emperor Yongle (r. 1403-1424 CE) on seven diplomatic missions to increase trade and secure tribute...

Finding a maritime route to the East and gaining access to the lucrative spice trade stood at the root of the European Age of Exploration. However, when Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and...

The spices clove, nutmeg, and mace originated on only a handful of tiny islands in the Indonesian archipelago but came to have a dramatic, far-reaching impact on world trade. In antiquity, they became popular...

Throughout the 15th century, the Portuguese Crown yearned for a piece of the Far Eastern spice trade. For centuries this trade had been dominated by the Venetians who obtained pepper, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon...

Cyrus the Great (558-530 BCE) built the first universal empire, stretching from Greece to the Indus River. This was the famous Achaemenid Empire of Persia. An inscription at Naqsh-i-Rustam, the tomb...

Piracy has involved many nationalities over the centuries, but one of the prominent groups in the medieval and early modern periods was the French pirates, who terrorised the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean...

The island of Sri Lanka (formerly known as Ceylon) became a focus of European attention soon after the Portuguese entry into the Indian Ocean in the late 15th century. Large swaths of the island would come...