PROJECT EMPIRE

How the English Language Conquered the World

This article is part of Project Empire, an editorial series designed to explore the history of the British Empire. See the full collection here » In 1170, Richard De Clare, the English Earl of Pembroke, subdued the Irish city of…

The Criminal Origins of the United States of America

Illustration by Zeyd Anwar; Credits: Wikipedia; British Library; British Museum This article is part of Project Empire, an editorial series designed to explore the history of the British Empire. See the full collection here » On December 15, 1722, twenty-seven…

The Real Cecil Rhodes

This article is part of Project Empire, an editorial series designed to explore the history of the British Empire. See the full collection here » I doubt many of us would feel comfortable putting up a statue with the following…

The Enslaved Prince of Annamaboe

Illustration by Zeyd Anwar; New Politic; National Portrait Gallery; Christies This article is part of Project Empire, an editorial series designed to explore the history of the British Empire. See the full collection here » The entrance door to the…

Introducing Project Empire

Illustration by Zeyd Anwar; New Politic This article is part of Project Empire, an editorial series designed to explore the history of the British Empire. See the full collection here » Lives were taken and millions were displaced. Countries were…

Latest Posts

How Pubs Drive Support For Far-Right Parties

Gage Skidmore / Flickr The decline of the high street has been hollowing out British town centres in recent years. When pubs, community centres, libraries and banks close, it adds to a sense of local decline. In my recently published research, I found…

You Might Own Britains Rarest 50p Coins

Do you think you might hold Britain’s rarest 50p coin? According to the Royal Mint, the government-owned mint responsible for producing coins in the United Kingdom, there are 10 particularly rare 50p coins, which were revealed ahead of the UK’s…

What Keir Starmer Can Learn From the History of Labour Leader Documentaries

The news that Keir Starmer is considering starring in a fly-on-the-wall documentary, brings back memories of similar endeavours. Kinnock: The Movie (1987), Blair: The Biopic (1997), Ed Miliband: A Portrait (2015) and Jeremy Corbyn: The Outsider (2016) were each part of attempts to return Labour to government. Kinnock, Miliband…

Is the Party Over For Boris Johnson?

Picture by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street The Labour prime minister Harold Wilson coined the phrase “a week is a long time in politics”, something that has certainly been confirmed by recent events. Up until very recently, it…

Priti Patel is a Threat to British Democracy

UK Government / Flickr It was during a panel on BBC Question Time that voters were exposed to the deep-rooted authoritarianism of Priti Patel. Discussing the merits of capital punishment, Ian Hislop, editor of the Private Eye, noted that many…

Vladimir Putins Imperial Ambitions Live On

New Politic Vladimir Putin has long insisted Ukraine is part of the country he rules. “Kiev is the mother of Russian cities. Ancient Rus is our common source and we cannot live without each other,” he wrote in March 2014 –…

A Budget of Division

Luca Boffa / No 10 Downing Street As the Conservative party wrestled with its future direction towards the end of the 1970s, Margaret Thatcher’s think tank, the Centre for Policy Studies, published a pamphlet of speeches by its co-founder, Keith…

Tony Blair Wants to Make a Comeback

Illustration by Zeyd Anwar. Credits: Wikimedia Commons The tale of Tony Blair is a tragedy. The former Labour prime minister has suffered nothing but scorn upon leaving office, a result of Iraq: a war he led his people into, against their…

Chinas Silicon Valley is Forging the Future

Credits: Paolo Braiuca / Flickr Counter-intuitively, AI Superpowers is not just an AI book. Nor is it a book on geopolitics. It does much more than critically analyse and compare AI developments in China and the United States. Far from…

The Strange Rebirth of a Defunct System

This article is part of Project Empire, an editorial series designed to explore the history of the British Empire. See the full collection here » The question — “what part does imperialism play in the 2016 majority vote for Brexit?”…