Empire

Mar 24 2025 244 ep. 47 mins 15.1k
Empire Podcast artwork

How do empires rise? Why do they fall? And how have they shaped the world around us today?

William Dalrymple and Anita Anand explore the stories, personalities and events of empire over the course of history.

  History
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240. Ireland’s Fight For Freedom: The Irish Civil War (Ep 3)

Mar 24 2025 63 mins  
In the aftermath of the Irish War of Independence in 1921, Michael Collins is sent to London to meet Winston Churchill, David Lloyd George and other British officials to negotiate a treaty. After weeks of travelling back and forth across the Irish Sea, Collins and his fellow Sinn Féin negotiators return with a deal. Ireland would become a Free State, but it would remain in the B

239. Ireland’s Fight For Freedom: The Rise of The IRA (Ep 2)

Mar 19 2025 62 mins  
The Irish republicans who led the Easter Rising of 1916 are tried for treason by the British government, and sentenced to death. Some are so unwell they have to be tied to a chair to be killed, and the brutality of these executions turns the tide of public opinion in Ireland, increasing support for the Republican cause. The remaining revolutionaries are carted off to prisons and i

238. Ireland’s Fight For Freedom: The Easter Rising (Ep 1)

Mar 17 2025 56 mins  
The 1916 Easter Rising was a definitive moment in 20th-century Irish history. Its memory was evoked throughout The Troubles, with republicans wearing commemorative Easter Lily badges to honour the revolutionary martyrs that came before them. On Easter Monday in 1916, amongst the backdrop of the ongoing First World War, Irish revolutionaries brought the anti-colonial struggle to B

237. The Great Famine: The Irish Exodus to America (Ep 2)

Mar 12 2025 45 mins  
The legacy of the Great Famine continues to shape not only Ireland, but the Irish diaspora in America, Canada, and the UK. In the mid-1800s, starving families fled the country in search of survival, gathering at the docks to board “coffins ships” sailing to Liverpool and the east coast of the USA. When “the famine Irish” arrived in America they resented the idea of ever doi

236. The Great Famine: The Blight Strikes Ireland (Ep 1)

Mar 10 2025 43 mins  
How did the memory of the Great Famine shape Irish identity? Could it have been prevented? From 1845 to 1852, a disease decimated potato crops across Ireland. Farmers of small plots who relied entirely on this monoculture were launched into complete destitution. Desperate families were evicted from their homes and suffered through starvation. British public policy offered limite

235. The Viceroy, The Psychopath, and The Merchant: The Irish in Empire (Ep 3)

Mar 05 2025 53 mins  
Ireland may have been England’s first colony but, by the 17th century, Irishmen were carving out their own imperial legacies in India. Gerald Aungier, an ambitious East India Company official, saw Bombay as a new frontier for plantation and trade. Drawing from his family’s plantation experience in Ireland, he laid the foundations for the establishment of the legal and economic

234. Battle of the Boyne: Clash of Two Kings (Ep 2)

Mar 03 2025 43 mins  
The Restoration reinstates the monarchy in England, Scotland & Ireland, and Irish Catholics believe that they will get their lands back for their loyalty to the king. And when the openly Catholic King James II succeeds his older brother, they are even more hopeful. But English Protestants fear that his reign will lead to a Catholic dynasty, and invite the Dutch William of Orange to

233. Blood and Betrayal: Oliver Cromwell's Irish Invasion (Ep 1)

Feb 26 2025 42 mins  
His statue may stand proudly outside the Houses of Parliament in London, but in Ireland, Oliver Cromwell is remembered as “the Devil from over the Sea” for the bloodshed he unleashed there from 1649 to 1653. Rising to prominence as a Parliamentarian during the English Civil Wars, Oliver Cromwell sought revenge against the Catholics who had killed Protestant colonists in Irela

Legacy: Genghis Khan

Feb 25 2025 7 mins  
After victory in China, Genghis Khan goes west and takes on the Khwarezmians, surprising his enemy with a daring assault. He conquers all in his path and now controls the biggest empire the world has ever seen. But whose shoulders are broad enough to become his successor? Listen to Goalhanger and Wondery's podcast, Legacy, as Afua Hirsch and Peter Frankopan explore the life of Gen

232. Colonising Ireland: The First Plantations (Ep 2)

Feb 24 2025 40 mins  
In 1607, after launching a failed rebellion in Ulster against the English, Hugh O’Neill and other Irish nobles are forced to flee Ireland, and their lands are confiscated. In response to the revolt, an insidious narrative about Irish people emerges in Tudor England, describing them as ‘caterpillars’ and ‘barbarians’ who needed ‘civilising’. In the wake of the develo