Chapter 4, Part 18 At the height of the spice trade in the Orient, the Europeans had their eyes fixated on strategic islands along the trade routes, which they eventually colonized. From British Hong Kong and Portuguese Macau at the Pearl River Delta, to Singapore […]
Month: January 2017
George Town’s Light and Shadow
Chapter 4, Part 17 The 19th century in South Asia. It was a period of time in history when the British consolidated their colonial possessions in the Indian subcontinent. What started out as mere trade missions in the early 17th century, became a vast colonial […]
Thanjavur and the Doctrine of Lapse
Chapter 4, Part 16 Once South and Southeast Asia were lands where Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms and empires, and later Islamic sultanates, conquered one another not only to exert their dominance, but also to control the lucrative spice trade in the region. Then the Europeans […]
Pondicherry: Vestiges of French India
Chapter 4, Part 15 In 2006 I was in my second year learning French, and like many others who learned the language, I became a Francophile. I spent a considerable amount of time turning the pages of various French magazines and tuning into TV5Monde whenever possible, […]
Chennai: An Enduring Charm
Chapter 4, Part 14 A string of light emerged on the horizon – scattered yellow speckles suggestive of an incoherent network of offices, houses, temples and roads – forming a boundary against the darkness beyond. The plane made a turn, and more were presented to […]
What an Amazing World! 