Posts Tagged ‘South Asian history’
Ashoka: The Buddhist Emperor of India
I recently blogged about Chandragupta Maurya, who created an empire out of the chaos that followed Alexander the Great’s invasion of India. Chandragupta was an empire founder, but the real empire builder in the Mauryan dynasty was Chandragupta’s grandson, Ashoka, who ruled from 269 to 232 BCE. Although he was a successful warrior, who expanded…
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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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