South Asian History
India’s First Emperor
Okay, I’m a little slow. India’s Independence Day was yesterday. Still, I think a bit of South Asian history is in order as a belated celebration: Cyrus the Great built the Persian empire on those of the Medes and the Babylonians. Alexander the Great began his empire by taking over Persia. Chandragupta Maurya created the…
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Déjà Vu All Over Again: Back to Afghanistan
A while back I blogged about Great Britain’s first disastrous attempt to invade Afghanistan. That post barely scratched the surface of the story, so I was delighted when Shelf Awareness sent me Diana Preston’s The Dark Defile:: Britain’s Catastrophic Invasion of Afghanistan, 1838-1842 to review. In The Dark Defile, Preston tells the story of Great…
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Deciphering the Indus Valley
Around 2500 BCE, the first cities appeared on the banks of the Nile in Egypt, at the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates in ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), and in the valley of the Indus River in what is now Pakistan and northwest India India. Thanks to the Old Testament, traveling museum exhibitions, and popular…
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