East Indies: Did you mean...?

An 1880s photograph of ivory traders in East Africa.

A copper coin minted by the British East India Company (EIC). From Bombay, 1821.

A c. 1850 print showing an opium warehouse of the East India Company in Patna, India. Opium was dried into large balls and then packed into chests for transportation to China.

Before the days of the Raj, British India was ruled by a private corporation: The Honourable East India Company. The Company, which began in India as a purely mercantile institution, eventually came...

An 1839 illustration showing a trooper and sepoy (Indian recruit) of the East India Company army. 27th Regiment of Madras Native Infantry. (British Library, London)

An early-20th-century painting by Wilhelm Kuhnert depicting German-led African Askari troops at the Battle of Mahenge during the Maji-Maji Rebellion (1905-7) against colonial rule in German East Africa.

The First Continental Congress was a meeting of delegates from twelve of the Thirteen Colonies of British North America that gathered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 5 September to 26 October 1774. Its primary purpose...

From the 16th to 18th centuries, two treasure fleets sailed each year, one to Mexico and the other to Central America, then part of the Spanish Empire. There they collected precious eastern goods and the riches of the Americas...

The Thirteen Colonies were a cluster of British colonies located along the Atlantic seaboard of North America. Founded for a variety of reasons – economic, political, and religious – the colonies emerged with their own distinct...

The Treaty of Paris, signed on 3 September 1783 by representatives from Great Britain and the United States, was the peace agreement that formally ended the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and recognized the United...