by Aseem Gupta | Jul 24, 2016 | Biography, Lives & Historical Figures
The popular version of Wojtek’s story belongs in a war film: artillery explodes across the Italian mountains while an enormous bear strides through the chaos carrying ammunition for Polish soldiers. The truth is less cinematic, but no less extraordinary. Wojtek did...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 14, 2016 | Relationships, Love & Human Connection
You notice someone across a crowded gathering. You ask mutual friends about them, dress more carefully when you expect to meet, and wonder whether a smile means genuine interest or ordinary politeness. Perhaps you send a gift, arrange another encounter, or rely on a...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 8, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
In the ruins of Hampi, the scale of the vanished city remains difficult to comprehend. Temple towers rise above boulder-strewn hills. Stone bazaars stretch towards sacred complexes. Aqueducts, reservoirs, roads, gateways and palace foundations reveal a capital built...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 7, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
The Delhi Sultanate’s expansion into the Deccan seemed, for a time, to prove that armies based in northern India could dominate almost the entire subcontinent. Delhi’s commanders raided wealthy capitals, forced powerful kings to submit, carried enormous quantities of...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 6, 2016 | Biography, Lives & Historical Figures
On the ninth day of the fourth lunar month in 752, thousands of monks, courtiers, officials, musicians, dancers and foreign dignitaries gathered at Tōdai-ji in Japan’s imperial capital of Nara. Before them sat an enormous bronze image of Vairocana Buddha, the product...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 5, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
In 1025, an imperial force from southern India crossed the Bay of Bengal and attacked a chain of ports connected to Srivijaya, the dominant maritime power of Southeast Asia. The campaign reached across a commercial world linking the Tamil coast with Sumatra, the Malay...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 4, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
More than four thousand years ago, millions of people lived in cities and settlements spread across a vast part of northwestern South Asia. They built neighbourhoods with brick-lined drains, dug hundreds of wells, captured seasonal rainwater in enormous reservoirs,...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 3, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
When Kim Jong Il died in December 2011, television footage from North Korea showed crowds collapsing in grief. Men and women sobbed in streets and public squares. Some clutched one another for support. Others beat the frozen ground with their hands as the funeral...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 2, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
China is often described as a civilisation with five thousand years of continuous history. The phrase captures something real: an exceptionally long tradition of writing, political thought, historical memory and cultural inheritance. Yet it can also create a...
by Aseem Gupta | Feb 1, 2016 | History, Empires & Civilizations
Where does the history of the United States begin? It cannot begin in 1776, because the society that declared independence had already been shaped by more than a century of colonisation, slavery, religious conflict, imperial warfare and local self-government. It...
