The Partition of British India: Timeline
Reading time: 6 minutes
Track the key events during British colonial rule leading to the emergence of the independent nation-states of India and Pakistan in 1947.
Tag: Indian
What is the History of Diwali?
Reading time: 4 minutes
Diwali is a festival of lights and celebrates the triumph of light over darkness – but where does this stem from? Suzanne Newcombe looks at the religious festival’s origins in this article.
The legacy of Empire: The Bengal Famine
Reading time: 4 minutes
One of the motivations of The Things We Forgot To Remember is as an answer to the question “Why study history?” There are a lot of answers to this, but one important reason is that people are already talking about history, and sometimes, they have got it seriously wrong. One example of this is the widespread ignorance of the Bengal famine. For me, the ‘killer facts’ about the Bengal famine are straightforward. In 1941, when the Battle of the Atlantic was at its height, Winston Churchill and the War Cabinet considered the question of relative priority to give to imports of food, raw materials, and munitions.
Cracking the Code: The Quest to Decipher the Indus Valley Script
Reading time: 5 minutes
The Rosetta Stone laid the groundwork for our understanding of Ancient Egyptian language and culture when French scholar Jean-François Champollion cracked its code in September 1822. But the Rosetta Stone isn’t the only unsolved puzzle out there. Since the discovery of the Indus Valley Civilisation in the 1920s, the Indus Valley Script has remained an enigma, resisting all attempts at decipherment. From the origins of the civilisation to the reasons why the script remains undecoded, and what the future may hold, unlocking the Indus Valley Script could reveal important insights into one of history’s great ancient cultures.
The East River Column: the rebels who helped Second World War prisoners of war
Reading time: 13 minutes
The underground resistance group the East River Column played a vital role opposing Japanese forces around Hong Kong during the Second World War. Their activities provided a lifeline for Allied prisoners of war, who they aided with support, shelter, and a means of escape.
Annexation or Liberation? India, Portgual, and Goa: 1961
Reading time: 10 minutes
On 18th July 1947, British rule in India came to an end, closing a 300-year old chapter in the history of the subcontinent. But another empire had been in India for over a century more, and it would be over a decade later that this longer story was finished.
Shapurji Saklatvala – British MP and agitator for change
Reading time: 4 minutes
Shapurji Saklatvala was born in India in 1874, the son of a merchant. His maternal uncle founded what is today the Tata group – a multinational conglomerate. Saklatvala worked for the company for part of his career, and first moved to England to run the Manchester office. After moving to England, he married Sarah Marsh, who came from a Derbyshire family, and they went on to have five children.
Tales from the Special Operations Executive: Operation Remorse
Reading time: 6 minutes
It was ‘the biggest currency black market in history’, a secret operation under the auspices of the Special Operations Executive (SOE), Britain’s Second World War clandestine warfare organisation. This was Operation Remorse, a deeply imperial venture, dedicated to maintaining the commercial interests and prestige of the British Empire – sometimes acting in direct competition with its allies. Most significantly, it was a dramatic success. It returned over 15 times the money invested, a return totalling £77,741,758 at the time – about £2.5 billion today. It achieved this feat by smuggling valuable luxury items, trading wartime goods, and most profitably by manipulating exchange rates in illicit currency transactions on the Chinese Black Market. The money financed several British operations and organisations in China.
The colonial origins of scientific forestry in Britain
Reading time: 27 minutes
Around 1850 Britain had no forestry service and there was no formal training of foresters. Forestry was still practised in the context of estates mainly owned by the aristocracy and managed by foresters who had learned the traditional management techniques under an apprentice system from their predecessors. British forestry was fragmented, not formalised, and far from centralised during the entire 19th century.
Five myths about the partition of British India – and what really happened
Reading time: 6 minutes
This August marks 75 years since the partition of the Indian subcontinent. British withdrawal from the region prompted the creation of two new states, India and Pakistan.
The process of transferring power grossly simplified diverse societies to make it seem like dividing social groups and drawing new borders was logical and even possible. This decision unleashed one of the biggest human migrations of the 20th century when more than ten million people fled across borders seeking safe refuge.
History is Complicated – SOE in Burma
Reading time: 7 minutes
It was estimated by Force 136 that they recruited around 20,000 indigenous personnel for operations in Burma. A few hundred of them are on my Men of SOE Burma page, compiled by going through several files of training cards. While the research for that page has provided excellent insight into a cross section of the many Burmese peoples who served with SOE, most of the 20,000 will remain unaccounted for because there is no record of them. Sadly, this means that their service will never be recognised outside of their own families.
Second Battle of El Alamein: Australia Forces a Breach
Reading time: 8 minutes
The battle of El Alamein in late 1942 was the turning point for the North African campaign, which saw the fighting rage back and forth between Libya and Egypt. As with most of the battles in the region, Australians played a vital role in the eventual Allied victory. In this article, we go over their experiences during this pivotal battle.
