S01E01 A Taste for Power
Jeremy Paxman traces the story of the greatest empire the world has ever known: the British Empire. In the first programme, he asks how such a small country got such a big head, and how...
Empire
S01E04: Making a Fortune
Jeremy Paxman continues his personal account of Britain's empire, looking at how the empire began as a pirates' treasure hunt, grew into an informal empire based on trade and developed into a global financial network. He travels from Jamaica, where sugar made plantation owners rich on the backs of African slaves, to Calcutta, where British traders became the new princes of India. Jeremy then heads to Hong Kong, where British-supplied opium threatened to turn the Chinese into a nation of drug addicts - leading to the brutal opium wars, in which Britain triumphed and took the island of Hong Kong as booty. Unfair trading helped spark the independence movement in India, led by Mahatma Gandhi; in a former cotton spinning town in Lancashire, Jeremy meets two women who remember Gandhi's extraordinary visit in 1931.
Overview
Empire is a major five-part series presented by Jeremy Paxman. It tells the story of the British Empire in a new way, tracing not only the rise and fall of the empire but also the complex effects of the empire on the modern world – political, technological and social – and on Britain.
Episodes
S01E02 Making Ourselves at Home
Jeremy Paxman traces the story of the greatest empire the world has ever known: the British Empire. He continues his personal account of Britain's empire by looking at how traders, conquerors and settlers spread the...
S01E03 Playing The Game
Jeremy Paxman traces the story of the greatest empire the world has ever known: the British Empire. He continues his personal account of Britain's Empire by tracing the growth of a peculiarly British type of...
S01E04 Making a Fortune
Jeremy Paxman continues his personal account of Britain's empire, looking at how the empire began as a pirates' treasure hunt, grew into an informal empire based on trade and developed into a global financial network....
S01E05 Doing Good
In the final part of his personal account of Britain's empire, Jeremy Paxman tells the extraordinary story of how a desire for conquest became a mission to improve the rest of mankind, especially in Africa,...
Cast
Jeremy Paxman
Self - Presenter
