French Colonial Empire: Did you mean...?

The Battle of Neerwinden saw the major defeat of a French republican army by an allied force of Austrians and Dutch during the War of the First Coalition (1792-97), part of the broader French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802). The battle drove...

Sir William Johnson, 1st Baronet (l. c.1715-1774) was a British military officer, diplomat, and Superintendent of Indian Affairs. He was instrumental in aligning the Native Americans of New York with the British during the French and Indian...

The Battle of Valmy was a stunning French victory over a Prussian-led coalition army on 20 September 1792, during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802). Although the battle was little more than a skirmish, it halted the coalition's invasion...

The Neo-Assyrian Empire (912-612 BCE) was the final stage of the Assyrian Empire, stretching throughout Mesopotamia, the Levant, Egypt, Anatolia, and into parts of Persia and Arabia. Beginning with the reign of Adad Nirari II (912-891 BCE...

Raising sugar cane could be a very profitable business, but producing refined sugar was a highly labour-intensive process. For this reason, European colonial settlers in Africa and the Americas used slaves on their plantations, almost all...

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. French writers often...

The Battle of Tourcoing (17-18 May 1794) was a major engagement in the War of the First Coalition, the first phase of the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802). It saw an army of the French Republic successfully fend off a six-pronged attack...

The Holy Roman Empire officially lasted from 962 to 1806. It was one of Europe’s largest medieval and early modern states, but its power base was unstable and continually shifting. The Holy Roman Empire was not a unitary state, but a confederation...

The National Museum Zurich recently opened a comprehensive and multi perspectival exhibition on Switzerland’s colonial past: Colonial – Switzerland’s Global Entanglements. Based on the latest, original research and drawing on biographies...

A photograph of captured French colonial troops from Africa during the Fall of France to Nazi Germany in June 1940 during the Second World War (1939-45). Imperial War Musuems