The rise and fall of empires and the events that shaped world history. William Dalrymple and Anita Anand explore the intricate stories of revolutions, imperial wars, and the people who built and lost empires. From the British Empire to the Ottomans to Ancient India, history is shaped by power struggles and territorial conquests. How does it continue to affect the world today? Empire Club: Become a member of the Empire Club to receive early access to miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to live show tickets, bonus episodes, book discounts, our exclusive newsletter, and access to our members’ chatroom on Discord! Head to empirepoduk.com to sign up. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com.
359 episodes transcribedWilliam Kidd, a respectable Scottish privateer during the late 17th century, tasked with hunting down pirates on the orders of a murky cabal of Britis...
Alongside legends like Blackbeard and Calico Jack, William Kidd is one of the most famous pirates to have entered the public consciousness, thanks to...
“At our first salutation he drank damnation to me and my men who styled cowardly puppies saying he would neither give nor take quarter…” By the end o...
The history of pirates is a thrilling kaleidoscope of adventure, devastation, violence and political intrigue, and never more so than during the 17th...
When King Alfonso VI of León took Toledo from the Arabs in 1085, the history of western christendom changed forever. Within the city existed a number...
Often called Arabic numerals, the modern number system we use today actually originates in India. Whilst in the west they were using Roman numerals, i...
From India to Africa, the involvement and influence of Scots in the British Empire has been profound. In both arenas, they rose through the ranks as s...
The extraordinary lives of three Scotsmen - John Henderson, Richard Oswald, and David Livingstone - encapsulate the polarities of the Scottish experie...
In the wake of Culloden, much of Scotland was on its knees. Crippled by defeat and the subsequent backlash of the British government, along with famin...
Few battles in history have been remembered as powerfully, nor been as mythologised, as Culloden on the 16th of April 1746. Under the leadership of Ch...
In 1688 the Stuart King James II was ousted from the throne by his daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange, in what is called the Glorious Rev...
With the accession of James I and VI in 1603, Scotland was assimilated into the composite monarchy of the United Kingdom. James, an eccentric, insecur...
When charting the rise of Scotland’s global influence, few events have been as tragically remarkable as the Darien Scheme of 1698, which saw woefully...
In the 9th century AD, two years after the Holy Roman Empire was established in Western Christendom, another world-shaking empire was rising in the ea...
While in the West the legends of King Arthur were being born, a Buddhist tantric magician of immense magical powers - Vajrabodhi - was enshrining hims...
India’s transformation of the ancient world is indisputable, and tangible evidence of this can be found in the magnificent Hindu and Buddhist temples...
Having garnered absolute power through bloody means, Empress Wu Zetian begins seeing apparitions, haunted by her violent schemes. With her husband inc...
The inculcation of Buddhism from India as the state religion in China was enabled by the violent rise of China’s only ever woman Emperor. Raised by pi...
It was actually India, not China, that was the greatest trading partner of the Roman Empire. During this era, it’s clear that sea travel was the faste...
For a millennium and a half, India was a confident exporter of its diverse civilisation, creating around it a vast empire of ideas. Indian art, religi...
