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Indian Muslims, whether Pathans from the north-west or Tamils from the south, were all seen by Arabs as “Hindis”

there is little doubt that some Indian ruler, emulating his forerunners, would have done so.

the dismantling of existing political institutions, the fomenting of communal division and systematic political discrimination with a view to maintaining British domination.

Later, in 1857, the sight of Hindu and Muslim soldiers rebelling together,

As early as 1859, the then British governor of Bombay, Lord Elphinstone, advised London that “Divide et impera was the old Roman maxim, and it should be ours”.

The effort to understand ethnic, religious, sectarian and caste differences among Britain’s subjects inevitably became an exercise in defining, dividing and perpetuating these differences.

As late as 1920, under the Montagu-Chelmsford “reforms”, Indian representatives on the councils – elected by a franchise so restricted and selective that only one in 250 Indians had the right to vote

many other kinds of social strife were labelled as religious due to the colonists’ orientalist assumption that religion was the fundamental division in Indian society.

the creation and perpetuation of Hindu–Muslim antagonism was the most significant accomplishment of British imperial policy

The British ran government, tax collection, and administered what passed for justice.

Indians were excluded from all of these functions.

entire new communities were created by people who had not consciously thought of themselves as particularly different from others around them.

Democracy, in other words, had to be prised from the reluctant grasp of the British by Indian nationalists.

British law had to be imposed upon an older and more complex civilisation with its own legal culture

only three cases can be found of Englishmen executed for murdering Indians, while the murders of thousands more at British hands went unpunished.

In his notorious 1835 Minute on Education, Lord Macaulay articulated the classic reason for teaching English, but only to a small minority of Indians

The language was taught to a few to serve as intermediaries between the rulers and the ruled

But the facts are even more damning.

the third-class compartments, with their wooden benches and total absence of amenities, into which Indians were herded, attracted horrified comment even at the time

their Indian mechanics became so adept that in 1878 they started designing and building their own locomotives.

today rely extensively on Indian technical expertise, provided to them by Rites, a subsidiary of the Indian Railways.

The process of colonial rule in India meant economic exploitation and ruin to millions, the destruction of thriving industries, the systematic denial of opportunities to compete, the elimination of indigenous institutions of governance, the transformation of lifestyles and patterns of living that had flourished since time immemorial, and the obliteration of the most precious possessions of the colonised, their identities and their self-respect.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, British shopkeepers tried to pass off shoddy English-made textiles as Indian in order to charge higher prices for them.

there is no earthly reason why this could not again have been the case, if its resources had not been drained away by the British.

Today Indians cannot live without the railways;

As I’ve often argued, you don’t need to seek revenge upon history. History is its own revenge.

managed to fend off both the French and the British through skillful diplomacy. He adopted many European customs and was intensely interested in European technologies. He also played the British and French off of one another, preserving most of Siam's territory and its independence.

The Ottoman Empire was too large, powerful, and complex for any one European power to simply annex it outright.

the European powers peeled off its territories in northern Africa and southeast Europe by seizing them directly or by encouraging and supplying local independence movements.

the Ottoman government or Sublime Porte had to borrow money from European banks to finance its operations. When it was unable to repay the money it owed to the London and Paris-based banks, they took control of the Ottoman revenue system, seriously infringing on the Porte's sovereignty. Foreign interests also invested heavily in railroad, port, and infrastructure projects, giving them ever more power within the tottering empire. The Ottoman Empire remained self-governing until it fell after World War I, but foreign banks and investors wielded an inordinate amount of power there.

Like the Ottoman Empire, Qing China was too large for any single European power to simply grab. Instead, Britain and France got a foothold through trade

Both Great Britain and Russia hoped to seize Afghanistan as part of their "Great Game" - a competition for land and influence in Central Asia. However, the Afghans had other ideas; they famously "don't like foreigners with guns in their country,

They slaughtered or captured an entire British army

, that gave Britain control of Afghanistan's foreign relations,

This shielded British India from Russian expansionism while leaving Afghanistan more or less independent.

Like Afghanistan, the British and Russians considered Persia an important piece in the Great Game

Russia nibbled away at northern Persian territory

Britain extended its influence into the eastern Persian Balochistan region

Like the Ottomans, the Qajar rulers of Persia had borrowed money from European banks for projects like railroads and other infrastructure improvements, and could not pay back the money.  Britain and Russia agreed without consulting the Persian government that they would split the revenues from Persian customs, fisheries, and other industries to amortize the debts. Persia never became a formal colony, but it temporarily lost control of its revenue stream and much of its territory - a source of bitterness to this

Nepal, Bhutan, Korea, Mongolia, and the Middle Eastern protectorates:

Nepal lost about one-third of its territory to the British East India Company's

However, the Gurkhas fought so well and the land was so rugged that the British decided to leave Nepal alone as a buffer state for British India. The British also began to recruit Gurkhas for their colonial army.

Bhutan, another Himalayan kingdom, also faced invasion by the British East India Company but managed to retain its sovereignty.

they relinquished the land in return for a tribute of five horses and the right to harvest timber on Bhutanese soil. Bhutan and Britain regularly squabbled over their borders until 1947, when the British pulled out of India, but Bhutan's sovereignty was never seriously threatened.

“We have to recognize the gesture of President Barack Obama, a brave gesture and historically necessary, perhaps the most important step of his presidency,” Mr. Maduro said.

Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan president and former Sandinista rebel, was chastising Mr. Obama just days ago, saying the United States deserved the top spot in a new list of state sponsors of terrorism. Then, on Wednesday, he saluted the “brave decisions” of the American president.

“Our previous Cuba policy was clearly an irritant and a drag on our policy in the region,”

“It removes an excuse for blaming the United States for things,”

“In the last Summit of the Americas, instead of talking about things we wanted to focus on — exports, counternarcotics — we spent a lot of time talking about U.S.-Cuba policy,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak publicly. “A key factor with any bilateral meeting is, ‘When are you going to change your Cuba policy?’

But while sharp differences persist on many issues, other major Washington policy shifts have recently been applauded in the region, including Mr. Obama’s immigration plan and the resettlement in Uruguay of six detainees from Guantánamo Bay.

“There will be radical and fundamental change,” said Andrés Pastrana, a former president of Colombia. “I think that to a large extent the anti-imperialist discourse that we have had in the region has ended. The Cold War is over.”