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
Tickets £5 per lecture
Tickets may be booked online by selecting ‘BOOK NOW’, by post or (if in the UK) by bank transfer.
If booking by post or by by bank transfer, please follow the instructions given here.
How to book
LECTURE PROGRAMME 2026-27
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TUESDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2026 18.30-20.00 BST (ZOOM)
The East India Company as Landowner
John Marriott
In this lecture John Marriott explores how and when an English private joint stock company transformed into a fully-fledged colonial power with control over large swathes of the Indian subcontinent. Drawing on cultural, legal and economic theory, he demonstrates the role played by land in the assembly of sovereign power, and how English discourses of land and judicial authority conflicted with indigenous and rival European traditions. The process was ad hoc, fragmented and pragmatic but by 1700 the Company had established the sites of Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, providing a toehold for the extraordinary land grab of the following century.
Professor John Marriott is a Visiting Fellow at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. He is the author of Land, Law and Empire: The Origins of British Territorial Power in India (2025).
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TUESDAY 15 DECEMBER 2026 18.30-20.00 GMT (ZOOM)
An Empire of Images
Apurba Chatterjee
Visual art played an important role in creating and reinforcing the legitimacy of British rule during the long 18th century. Through paintings, prints, and other images produced by both British and Indian artists, this lecture explores how India’s people, landscapes, plants, and animals became part of the way the British imagined and represented their empire. British artists tried to make sense of India and its cultures, while portraying British power as legitimate. Indian artists responded by drawing on their own artistic traditions and those introduced by the British.
Dr Apurba Chatterjee is a Visiting Fellow in History at the University of Reading. She is the author of An Empire of Images: Visual Culture and the British in India, 1688–1815 (2025).
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TUESDAY 19 JANUARY 2027 18.30-20.00 GMT (ZOOM)
The Jangi Lat Sahibs: Commanders-in-Chief, India, 1824-57
Peter Stanley
The most senior soldiers in British India were the commanders-in-chief of the Bengal Army. Between the great reorganisation of 1824 and the outbreak of the mutiny/rebellion of 1857, the position was held by twelve senior officers, all generals of the British (and not the Bengal) Army. These men represent a range of characters, effectiveness and influence, responsible for various achievements (and indeed, debacles). Based on research conducted for John Company’s Armies (2024), Peter Stanley will discuss the individuals known to the armies of India as Jangi Lat Sahib—‘military lord master’.
Formerly Principal Historian at the Australian War Memorial, Peter Stanley retired as Research Professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra in 2023. His books on the military history of British India include White Mutiny, Die in Battle, Do not Despair: The Indians on Gallipoli, Hul! Hul!: The Suppression of the Santal Rebellion, Bengal, 1855 and John Company’s Armies. Present projects include a pictorial history of the Indian armies 1860-1900.
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TUESDAY 16 FEBRUARY 2027 18.30-20.00 GMT (ZOOM)
Loot and the Making of British India
James L. Hevia
This lecture unveils the intricate and often contentious role of military looting and prize practices in shaping British imperial expansion on the Indian subcontinent. From the 18th century onward, the British army developed a unique system that transformed plundered property into 'booty' and redefined it as prize money, distributed under royal prerogative. James Hevia explores how these practices incentivised soldiering, constrained unregulated plunder and fuelled tensions between officers, soldiers and colonial authorities.
James L. Hevia is Professor Emeritus in the History Department and the College at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Loot and the Making of British India (2026). His research has focused on the British Empire in India and the Qing Empire in China. His books on British India include Animal Labor and Colonial Warfare and The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire-building in Asia.
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TUESDAY 16 MARCH 2027 18.30-20.00 GMT (ZOOM)
Women of Lucknow
Rosie Llewellyn-Jones and Sam Goodman
This lecture looks at the role played by elite women during the Uprising of 1857 at Lucknow. Rosie Llewellyn-Jones examines the role played by Begam Hazrat Mahal, one of deposed King Wajid Ali Shah's many wives, who emerged as de facto leader of the rebels. A woman of humble origins and extraordinary character, she devised military strategy and negotiated with different factions of soldiery, apparently immune to prejudice. Sam Goodman explores the experience of women on the other side. Besieged in the Lucknow Residency and under bombardment, British women who had previously enjoyed lives of ease contributed to the garrison's defence by acting as nurses, cooks, storekeepers and child-minders, and participating in night watches.
Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones MBE has written prolifically on colonial India. Her many books include Lucknow 1857, The Last King in India: Wajid Ali Shah, A Fatal Friendship: The Nawabs, the British and the City of Lucknow and, most recently, Hazrat Mahal: The Rebel Begam of Awadh (2026). Dr Sam Goodman, Senior Tutor in Humanities at the University of Bristol, is the author of British Spy Fiction and the End of Empire and The Retrospective Raj: Medicine, Literature and History After Empire.
This lecture is presented in association with the British Association for Cemeteries in South Asia.
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TUESDAY 13 APRIL 2027 18.30-20.00 BST (ZOOM)
Operation Longcloth 1943: The First Chindit Campaign
Robert Lyman
The Chindits were special operations units formed by Brigadier Orde Wingate as long range penetration forces against the Japanese in Burma. In February 1943 a 3000-man patrol crossed the Chindwin into Burma in an operation codenamed Longcloth, attacking enemy positions, cutting the north–south railway and disrupting communications. A third were killed, taken prisoner or died of disease before the survivors limped back into India in May but their exploits, highly publicised, provided a tremendous boost to Allied morale.
Robert Lyman examines the origins and training of Wingate's forces and how Operation Longcloth became the basis of the Chindit legend.
Dr Robert Lyman MBE is the author of A War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma and Britain 1941-45. Commissioned into the Light Infantry from Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, he left the army as a major. His other books include Kohima 1944, Slim: Master of War and Operation Longcloth 1943 (2027).
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TUESDAY 11 MAY 2027 18.30-20.00 BST (ZOOM)
Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia
Sam Dalrymple
As recently as 1928 India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Nepal, Bhutan, Yemen, Oman, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait were bound together as the Indian Empire. It was the British Empire’s crown jewel: a vast dominion stretching from the Red Sea to the jungles of Southeast Asia, home to a quarter of the world’s population. And then, in the space of just fifty years, the Indian Empire shattered. Five partitions tore it apart: carving out new nations, redrawing maps, and leaving behind a legacy of war, exile and division.
In this lecture Sam Dalrymple presents the story of how the Indian Empire was unmade. How a single, sprawling dominion became twelve modern nations. How maps were redrawn in boardrooms and on battlefields, by politicians in London and revolutionaries in Delhi, by kings in remote palaces and by soldiers in trenches.
Sam Dalrymple is a Scottish historian and film-maker who grew up in Delhi. He graduated from the University of Oxford as a Persian and Sanskrit scholar. His first book, Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia (2025), was an international bestseller.