Dutch east india company logo: Did you mean...?

The first text in Greek devoted entirely to India was written by Ctesias in the fourth century BCE. Only fragments of it survive. Yet he was probably the most widely quoted author on India, although Aristotle treated him with contempt. However...

Jan Pieterszoon Coen (1587-1629), an officer of the Dutch East India Company and twice the company's Governor-General in the Dutch East Indies, oil on wood portrait after Jacob Waben, 1629. Westfries Museum, Hoorn, The Netherlands.

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...

For well over 1,000 years, sacred stories and heroic epics have made up the mythology of Hinduism. Nothing in these complex yet colourful legends is fixed and firm. Pulsing with creation, destruction, love, and war, it shifts and changes...

The Black Hole of Calcutta refers to a prison cell which was used to hold 146 mostly British prisoners captured after the Nawab of Bengal had taken over the city from the East India Company. Interred on 20 June 1756 in a tiny cell in Fort...

Forts and sieges held a key position in ancient Indian warfare. Built on considerations of strategic location, topography, and the natural advantages provided by the site, forts would be heavily supplemented with man-made fortifications...

The emblem on a tank of the Deutsches Afrika Korps, Germany's armoured divisions active in North Africa during the Second World War (1939-45). (Imperial War Museums)

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) was the first of several major wars fought between the great powers of Europe in the 18th century. Triggered by the death of the sickly and childless King Charles II of Spain, the war was fought...

An 1808 coloured print showing the docks of the East India Company, known as the East India Docks, at Blackwall in London. (British Museum, London).

Disease has been a part of the human condition since the beginning of recorded history – and no doubt earlier – decimating populations and causing widespread social upheaval. Among the worst infections recorded is the plague which is fairly...