War & military technology

Topics represented

British Empire (68) · War & military technology (55) · Resistance & colonized agency (47) · War & conquest (40) · Colonization & sovereignty (30) · Law & imperial government (24) · Decolonization & independence (20) · Slavery & coerced labor (18) · Companies, trade & extraction (14) · Doctrina (14) · Logística (13) · Indigenous peoples & dispossession (13)

Records and sources

Ordered by start date. Long lives and processes may begin before the period you want to study.

1. 1750–1799

   Tipu Sultan

   Ruler of Mysore from 1782, Tipu Sultan modernized military forces, sought foreign alliances and fought the East India Company in a series of wars whose outcome was not predetermined. He died defending Seringapatam in 1799 when a Company-led coalition captured his capital. His career shows South Asian states deploying their own strategy, diplomacy and technology against British expansion

2. 1756–1763

   Seven Years’ War and British imperial expansion

   A global war against France and its allies transferred Canada and other positions to Britain, although conquests were returned or exchanged in several theaters. Victory produced new debt, contested Indigenous frontiers, and governing problems that fed the crisis of the Thirteen Colonies

3. 1757

   Plassey and the East India Company’s territorial turn

   Company forces led by Robert Clive defeated Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah through battle, conspiracy, and defections. Plassey did not conquer all India, but it opened the political and fiscal control of Bengal consolidated by Buxar and the grant of the diwani in 1764–1765

4. 1765–1783

   From the Stamp Act to United States independence

   Taxation, parliamentary control, and colonial resistance escalated from protest to war; the 1776 Declaration articulated independence and the 1783 Treaty of Paris recognized it. Loyalists, enslaved people, and Indigenous nations made their own choices and experienced divergent outcomes; the revolution did not universalize freedom

5. 1780–1784

   Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan resist the Company in Mysore

   Mysore inflicted a major defeat on the Company at Pollilur and sustained a regional war connected to Anglo-French rivalry. The Treaty of Mangalore largely restored the status quo; Mysore’s conquest was not yet inevitable

6. 1793–1794

   French levée en masse and revolutionary mobilization

   The revolutionary Convention decreed the levée en masse on 23 August 1793, linking recruitment, weapons and powder manufacture, supplies, clothing, and care for armies. It made state mobilization of people and resources on a large scale visible, but application was uneven and coercive and coexisted with resistance, exemptions, local economies, and internal conflicts; it was not the single origin of modern mobilization.

7. 1795–1806

   Britain occupies and retains the Cape Colony

   Britain occupied the Cape in 1795, briefly restored it, and retook it in 1806 to control the route to India. The change in sovereignty reordered relations among Dutch-speaking settlers, Khoikhoi, San, and Xhosa peoples, enslaved people, and the new colonial state

8. 1798–1801

   Irish Rebellion and creation of the United Kingdom

   The United Irishmen organized a republican, cross-confessional rebellion followed by extreme repression and sectarian violence. The Acts of Union abolished the Irish Parliament and created the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland; Ireland was both subordinated within the union and deeply implicated in empire

9. 1807

   Parliament abolishes the British slave trade

   The 1807 Act prohibited British subjects from participating in the transatlantic slave trade after decades of Black and abolitionist organizing. It did not emancipate enslaved people; slavery and illicit trafficking continued while the Royal Navy undertook an ambivalent, coercive interception campaign

10. 1815

    Kandyan Convention transfers the kingdom to the Crown

    Kandyan chiefs and British officials deposed King Sri Vikrama Rajasinha and transferred sovereignty to the Crown, which promised to protect Buddhism and customary practices. The subsequent breach of those expectations helped drive the Uva-Wellassa uprising of 1817–1818

11. 1816

    Bussa leads a rebellion against slavery

    Thousands of enslaved people rose in Barbados under leaders including Bussa, challenging plantation rule and frustrated expectations of freedom after 1807. The militia suppressed the uprising; executions and deportations reveal the violence sustaining the sugar economy

12. 1824–1832

    Black War, Black Line and Aboriginal survival in Tasmania

    British pastoral expansion in Van Diemen’s Land intensified a frontier war among settlers, colonial forces and Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples. In 1830 Governor George Arthur mobilized the “Black Line,” a mass operation intended to drive together and capture survivors; it failed militarily but accompanied a policy of removal and confinement. Tongerlongeter, Mannalargenna and other Aboriginal figures represent resistance, negotiation and survival against violence that cannot be narrated as the mere extension of settlement

13. 1824–1826

    The Anglo-Burmese War ends at Yandabo

    An extraordinarily costly war between the Company and the Konbaung kingdom ended with the Treaty of Yandabo. Burma ceded Arakan and Tenasserim, renounced claims to Assam and Manipur, and paid an indemnity, opening an expansion that culminated in full annexation

14. 1828–1858

    Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi

    Lakshmibai ruled Jhansi and contested the East India Company’s annexation of her state under the doctrine of lapse. During the 1857–1858 rebellion she organized and led forces against the British, left Jhansi after its siege and died fighting near Gwalior. Indian and British memories made her an emblematic figure, but her historical importance also lies in a concrete defense of dynastic and territorial sovereignty

15. 1831

    The Baptist War shakes slave Jamaica

    A strike led by Samuel Sharpe became the largest uprising by enslaved people in British Jamaica. Troops and militias suppressed it and executed Sharpe and hundreds of participants; the precise toll is disputed. The rebellion exposed the cost of maintaining slavery and accelerated parliamentary emancipation

16. 1837–1839

    Rebellions in the Canadas and the Durham Report

    Armed reformers rebelled against oligarchic government in Upper and Lower Canada. Lord Durham’s report recommended responsible government, but also provincial union and assimilation of French Canadians, combining settler autonomy with cultural hierarchy

17. 1839–1842

    The Opium War imposes the Treaty of Nanking

    China’s destruction of smuggled opium preceded a war in which British naval superiority forced open treaty ports, an indemnity, and the cession of Hong Kong. The treaty inaugurated an “unequal treaty” system and used force to protect a narcotics economy tied to India

18. c. 1840–c. 1921

    Yaa Asantewaa

    Queen Mother of Ejisu within the Asante political world, Yaa Asantewaa led the 1900 resistance known as the War of the Golden Stool. Britain’s demand concerning the stool, a symbol of the nation, made cultural sovereignty and political power part of the same conflict. After defeat she was exiled to Seychelles, where she died; the stool was not surrendered, and her leadership remains central to Ghanaian memory

19. 1845–1872

    The New Zealand Wars contest land and sovereignty

    Crown and colonial forces fought different iwi and Māori movements in distinct campaigns rather than one continuous war. Settler expansion, disputed purchases, and land confiscations were central; resistance included the Kīngitanga, innovative fortifications, and political and religious strategies

20. c. 1850–c. 1871

    Railways, telegraphy, and mass-mobilization planning

    By the mid-nineteenth century, general staffs and civil administrations increasingly coordinated reserves, trains, maps, supplies, and telegraphic communications to concentrate forces. The Prussian case shows both the possibilities of railway plans and their limits: rapid transport alone did not solve loading, storage, supply, political decisions, or an opponent’s response.

21. 1853–1902

    Cecil Rhodes

    A diamond magnate, Cape Colony prime minister and founder of the British South Africa Company, Rhodes converted mining capital and a corporate charter into territorial expansion toward present-day Zimbabwe and Zambia. His government advanced dispossession and racial segregation, and his backing of the Jameson Raid destabilized the region. Scholarships, monuments and university debates now prolong a contested memory of wealth, violence and imperial supremacy

22. 1855

    The Santal Hul challenges Company rule

    Tens of thousands of Santals mobilized under Sidhu, Kanhu, Chand, and Bhairav Murmu against revenue agents, moneylenders, zamindars, and Company rule. Suppression was devastating—the death toll is uncertain and contested—but the revolt forced administrative reorganization of the Santal Parganas

23. 1857–1858

    The 1857 Rebellion brings down Company rule

    A sepoy mutiny at Meerut spread into a heterogeneous war against the Company, centered on Delhi, Awadh, Kanpur, and Jhansi and involving figures such as Bahadur Shah Zafar, Rani Lakshmibai, Begum Hazrat Mahal, and Nana Sahib. Massacres and reprisals occurred on both sides; death totals, especially among civilians, remain uncertain

24. 1861

    Britain annexes Lagos

    Under naval pressure, Oba Dosunmu signed a treaty ceding Lagos to the Crown. British officials invoked suppression of the slave trade and commercial security while taking control of a crucial Yoruba port and opening a route inland that culminated in colonial Nigeria

25. 1865

    Morant Bay exposes post-emancipation violence

    Black protesters led by Paul Bogle attacked the courthouse after years of poverty, land scarcity, and political exclusion. Governor Edward Eyre imposed martial law; troops executed or killed hundreds and destroyed homes. British controversy pitted ideas of citizenship against racialized colonial rule

26. 1868

    The Maqdala expedition loots Tewodros II’s capital

    A vast force sent from India freed European hostages, defeated Emperor Tewodros II, and looted Maqdala. British soldiers and museums acquired manuscripts, sacred objects, and regalia; Ethiopian restitution claims continue and some institutions have returned or loaned objects

27. 1869–1870

    Louis Riel and the Métis form a provisional government

    The transfer of Rupert’s Land to Canada, negotiated without its inhabitants, prompted Métis resistance at Red River. A provisional government led by Louis Riel negotiated the Manitoba Act, which promised land and language rights; defective implementation drove dispersal and renewed dispossession

28. c. 1871–c. 1914

    Imperial German General Staff and war planning

    After unification in 1871, the reputation of the Prussian-German General Staff encouraged detailed planning for mobilization, deployment, and operations and influenced other military establishments. That reputation does not equal infallibility or total political control: plans depended on diplomatic assumptions, railways, reserves, incomplete information, and decisions by governments and commanders.

29. 1873–1878

    Conscription and General Staff in Meiji Japan

    The Meiji government introduced conscription in 1873 and created a General Staff in 1878 within a reorganization combining models, advisers, and resources from diverse origins. These institutions displaced the samurai military monopoly and strengthened state capacity, without being a mere European copy or a socially neutral transition: the burdens of service, taxation, and centralization prompted contestation and changed unevenly.

30. 1874–1965

    Winston Churchill

    Churchill was a soldier, colonial minister and prime minister during the Second World War and again from 1951 to 1955. He openly defended empire, opposed Indian self-government and participated in wartime decisions affecting imperial populations, including the Bengal crisis. His role in defeating Nazism does not erase his racial ideas or imperial policies; both dimensions belong together and require historically precise causal claims