British East India Company: Did you mean...?

Cochin, located on the southwest coast of India, was a Portuguese colony from 1503 to 1663. Known to the Portuguese as Cochim, it was one of several important cities on India’s Malabar Coast and a great trade centre for spices like pepper...

Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524) was a Portuguese navigator who, in 1497-9, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and arrived at Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the south-west coast of India. This was the first direct voyage from...

During the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840), textile production was transformed from a cottage industry to a highly mechanised one where workers were present only to make sure the carding, spinning, and weaving machines never stopped. Driven...

Building Babylon: this inscribed stone was found at the ruins of Babylon and described the religious devotion and civic achievement of king Nebuchadnezzar II. The long inscription records that as well as building the Processional Way and...

The Indus Valley Civilization was a cultural and political entity which flourished in the northern region of the Indian subcontinent between c. 7000 - c. 600 BCE. Its modern name derives from its location in the valley of the Indus River...

The First World War (1914-18) witnessed an arsenal of new weapons as all sides were desperate to gain an advantage, particularly in the static trench warfare of the Western Front. There were some old tried-and-tested weapons like the Lee-Enfield...

Henry Hudson (c. 1570-1611) was an English navigator and maritime explorer. He is known for his four voyages between 1607 and 1610 in search of a northwest passage via the Arctic Ocean to the Far East. The lure of a northwest passage became...

Captain William Kidd (c. 1645-1701) was a Scottish privateer turned pirate who, despite only ever capturing one significant prize ship, has become legendary thanks to the persistent rumour he buried a fantastic treasure that nobody has yet...

Daniel Morgan (l. c. 1735-1802) was an American frontiersman and soldier, most famous for leading a corps of riflemen during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). He rose to the rank of brigadier general in the Continental Army and...

The royal city of Ayutthaya (ah-you-tah-ya) was a small kingdom in Siam (modern Thailand), and it was an unrivalled commercial and maritime power from 1350-1767 CE. Ayutthaya became the second capital of Siam in 1438 CE when it absorbed the...