The Making of Today: Assassination and Power in late-1700s Mughal India, October-December 1759

On November 29 1759 the Mughal emperor Alamgir II, the descendant of the great Babur and Akbar, was assassinated on the orders of his vizier, Imad ul-Mulk. Coming to power at an incredibly young age Imad ul-Mulk had played the intricate game of court politics as the power of the Mughals was collapsing. Today we

The Making of Today: The 1757 Battle of Delhi, and the Afghan war for northern India, July-September 1757

Last time we looked at the Battle of Plassey where the Bengali nawab Siraj-au-daula viewed the British as a distraction from events further west. With hindsight we know that the Battle of Plassey was the first step towards British domination of the subcontinent, but for contemporaries the Afghan based Durrani Empire seemed to be the

The Making of Today: Prague and Plassey, the Seven Years’ War, April-June 1757

Welcome back to The Making of Today where we are looking at two (technically three) major battles of the Seven Years’ War. The Seven Years’ War was one of the first truly global wars and came from several separate wars coalescing into one larger war. The battles we are looking at today are in two

The Making of Today: The Siege of Minorca and Black Hole of Calcutta: The Seven Years’ War goes global, April-June 1756

Quite a few of our last The Making of Today posts have been about the conflict in North America between France and Britain. Both sides hoped that the conflict would remain a regional one, but in the second quarter of 1756 it spread to not only Europe, but also Asia. Today we’ll be looking at

The Making of Today: The Battle of Vijaydurg and Power in the Indian Ocean, January-March 1756

At the start of 1756 the Maratha navy was destroyed at the fort of Vijaydurg by the British East India Company, and the Marathas themselves. The Sarkhel, or Grand Admiral, of the Marathas, Tulaji Angre, had been rebelling so the peshwa, prime minister, allied with an enemy to take down the Sarkhel. This was a

World History: Decolonisation

Two overarching themes characterised post-war twentieth century: the Cold War and decolonisation. These two events deeply intersected, so it is almost impossible to separate them. Today we’re looking at the process of decolonisation, and the emergence of post-colonial states with all the difficulties which comes with it. Across Africa, Asia, and the Americas new movements

World History: Colonialism and Imperialism

One of the most influential aspect of history which shaped the present day was the rise of European, and later American and Japanese, empires in Africa and Asia. We briefly looked at colonialism when we discussed Britain in India and the rise of modern capitalism, but today, we will look at this in greater detail – especially the

World History: Britain in India

The last time that we looked at India Britain had managed to edge out its European competitors thanks to victory in the Seven Years’ War. This post will look at British rule in India from the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1765 until the start of the twentieth century – a period marked by

Left-Wing and the ‘Other’ History: Gayatri Spivak’s ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’

Gayatri Spivak One of the most influential works in postcolonial studies is Can the Subaltern Speak? (1983) by Gayatri Spivak. Spivak, in her own words, is a ‘practical Marxist-feminist-deconstructionist’ applying feminist, Marxist, and some postmodernist ideas to society, thought, and the past. Hence, this post will focus on both ‘Left-wing’ and the ‘Other’ history. Can

World History: The Mughals

Today we are looking at the last of the so-called ‘Gunpowder Empires’: the Mughals. The Mughals are perhaps one of the most influential of India’s empires with many aspects and images of India which the West has originating from the Mughal Empire. Since the 1990s India’s Hindu right has been on the rise, currently the