FOR ALL WITH AN INTEREST IN THE HISTORY
OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY AND THE BRITISH RAJ
ONLINE LECTURES
Online lectures run from November to April. They are broadcast via Zoom and are available UK-wide and to an international audience. Lectures are recorded and uploaded to YouTube for two weeks. Links are emailed to all ticket-holders.
HOW TO BOOK
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Tickets £5 per lecture
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Tickets may be booked online by selecting ‘BOOK NOW’, by post or by bank transfer.
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If booking by post or by by bank transfer, please follow the instructions given here.
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How to book
LECTURE PROGRAMME 2025–26
MONDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2025 18.30-20.00 GMT (ZOOM)
Glorious Failure: The Forgotten Story of French Imperialism in India
Robert Ivermee
From the reign of Louis XIV to the downfall of Napoleon, France was an aggressive imperial power in South Asia. Exploding the myth of a benign French presence, Robert Ivermee reveals how France’s Indian empire relied on war-making, conquest, opportunistic alliances, regime change and slavery to pursue its ambitions. He shows how the French deployed new ideas, like freedom and the rights of man, to build an extensive empire in India—only to see it undermined by conflict with Indian rulers, competition with other nations and fatal strategic errors.​
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Robert Ivermee is a historian of British and wider European colonialism in South Asia. He is Associate Professor at Sciences Po Grenoble, and the author of Glorious Failure and Hooghly.
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TUESDAY 16 DECEMBER 2025 18.30-20.00 GMT (ZOOM)
The Santal Rebellion
Peter Stanley
The Santal Rebellion of 1855 was in its day the most serious uprising that the East India Company ever faced. Overshadowed by the Great Mutiny of 1857, this rebellion—to which 10 per cent of the Bengal Army’s infantry was committed and in which at least 10,000 Santals died—has been forgotten. While its memory lived on among Santals, British officers published little about it, and most of the sepoys involved died in 1857. Peter Stanley discusses why the rebellion occurred, how it was fought and how it was suppressed.​
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Peter Stanley is Honorary Professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra. He has published widely on the history of the Indian Army, including White Mutiny, Hul! Hul! : The Suppression of the Santal Rebellion in Bengal, 1855 and John Company’s Armies: The Military Forces of British India, 1824-57.
TUESDAY 20 JANUARY 2026 18.30-20.00 GMT (ZOOM)
Onward Christian Soldier
Sir Mark Havelock-Allan
In mid-Victorian Britain, Major General Henry Havelock was the most celebrated military commander since Nelson and Wellington. His heroic march across northern India to relieve the beleaguered British garrisons at Cawnpore and Lucknow during the Indian Mutiny captured the public's imagination like no other since Waterloo. Opposed by tens of thousands of mutinous sepoys, Havelock fought three battles to reach Cawnpore, and a further five before he fought his way into the British Residency at Lucknow, preventing its fall and the massacre of everyone in it.
Sir Mark Havelock-Allan KC is a retired judge. He is the great-great-grandson of General Henry Havelock and is President of the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia.
TUESDAY 10 FEBRUARY 2026 18.30-20.00 GMT (ZOOM)
Julia Margaret Cameron
Jeff Rosen
Julia Margaret Cameron, the celebrated Victorian photographer, was a child of Empire. The daughter of a governing official of the East India Company, she moved in the first circles of colonial Calcutta. Relocating to England in her thirties, she avidly followed press reports of the Indian Mutiny, taking up photography at a time when national and imperial politics transfixed Britain. Jeff Rosen explores Cameron’s colonial roots and how she embedded in her work imagery that visualised Britain’s imperial power.
Jeff Rosen is a former academic dean at Loyola University Chicago and professor of art history at Columbia College Chicago. He is now a scholar-in-residence at the Newberry Library, Chicago. He is the author of Julia Margaret Cameron: The Colonial Shadows of Victorian Photography (2024).
TUESDAY 10 MARCH 2026 18.30-20.00 GMT (ZOOM)
Curzon's Chosen Men: Political Officers on the Periphery of Empire
Alan Dillon
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In the early 20th century, political resident John Gordon Lorimer ICS and political agent Captain William Shakespear of the Indian Foreign Department played prominent roles on behalf of the British and Indian Governments. As ‘warrior scholars’, both used their diplomatic, linguistic, intelligence and exploration skills in the Arabian Peninsula and Persia to enhance Britain’s understanding of the periphery of Empire, bequeathing geopolitical legacies that continue to resonate long after their careers were tragically cut short.
Alan Dillon is a serving diplomat who spent twelve years in the Royal Marines before joining the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 2000. He has served in Afghanistan, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Saudi Arabia and Oman, interspersed by spells in Whitehall, mostly covering the Gulf and South Asia regions. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the author of Captain Shakespear: Desert Exploration, Arabian Intrigue and the Rise of Ibn Sa’ud (2019) and Lorimer: His Gazetteer and Britain’s Pursuit of Knowledge (2024).
TUESDAY 14 APRIL 2025 18.30-20.00 BST (ZOOM)
Churchill's Forgotten Generals
Raymond Callahan
Generals Auchinleck, Slim and Savory and their role in the campaigns in Northeast India and Burma have been largely forgotten by historians. Auchinleck, as C-in-C India, made sure the Army was geared towards jungle warfare and improved the lot of Indian officers and men. Slim was the successful Commander of the 14th Army, who led it from defeat into victory. Savory, as Director of Infantry, ensured that all infantry battalions were trained for jungle warfare. The appointments of Auchinleck, Slim and Savory in 1943 were pivotal in the defeat of the Japanese in Burma. For the first time in the war the key figures in Indian military affairs were all drawn from the Indian Army and understood its traditions and ways.
Raymond Callahan is the author of Triumph at Imphal-Kohima: How the Indian Army Finally Stopped the Japanese Juggernaut and four other books on the Indian Army, including with Daniel Marston The Burma Campaign and the Transformation of the British Indian Army (2021), which won the Templer Medal Prize. He is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Delaware.