The British Empire comprised the dominions A dominion, often Dominion, refers to one of a group of semi-autonomous polities that were nominally under British sovereignty, constituting the British Empire and British Commonwealth, from the late 19th century. They have included Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, South Africa, and the Irish Free State. After 1948, the term was used, colonies A Crown colony was a type of colonial administration of the British Empire, protectorates A protectorate, in international law, is an autonomous territory that is protected diplomatically or militarily against third parties by a stronger state or entity. In exchange for this, the protectorate usually accepts specified obligations, which may vary greatly, depending on the real nature of their relationship. However, it retains sufficient, mandates A League of Nations mandate refers to a legal status for certain territories transferred from the control of one country to another following World War I, or the legal instruments that contained the terms for administering the territory on behalf of the League. These were of the nature of a treaty or convention and contained minority rights, and other territories A dependent territory, dependent area or dependency is a territory that does not possess full political independence or sovereignty as a State ruled or administered by the United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland[note 7] is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of the island of Ireland, and many small islands. Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK with a land, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts A trading post is a place or establishment where the trading of goods takes place. The preferred travel route to a trading post or between trading posts, is known as a trade route established by England The Kingdom of England was, from 927 to 1707, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe. At its height, the Kingdom of England spanned the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and several smaller outlying islands; what today comprises the legal jurisdiction of England and Wales. It had a land border with the Kingdom of in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was the largest An empire involves the extension of a state's sovereignty over external territories. For example, first the Spanish Empire and then the British Empire were called "the empires on which the sun never sets", because of their territories and possessions around the globe. This article provides a list of the largest empires in world history empire The term empire derives from the Latin imperium. Politically, an empire is a geographically extensive group of states and peoples united and ruled either by a monarch (emperor, empress) or an oligarchy. Geopolitically, the term empire has denoted very different, territorially-extreme states — at the strong end, the extensive Spanish Empire (16th in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power A great power is a nation or state that has the ability to exert its influence on a global scale. Great powers characteristically possess economic, military, diplomatic, and cultural strength, which may cause other smaller nations to consider the opinions of great powers before taking actions of their own. International relations theorists have. By 1922, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, one-quarter of the world's population at the time,^[1] and covered more than 13,000,000 square miles (33,670,000 km²): approximately a quarter of the Earth's total land area.^[2] As a result, its political Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals , rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action. A "common law system" is a legal system that gives great precedential weight to common law, on the principle that it is unfair to treat similar facts differently on different, linguistic English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of and cultural The culture of the United Kingdom refers to the patterns of human activity and symbolism associated with the United Kingdom and the British people. It is informed by the UK's history as a developed island country, being a major power, and, its composition of four countries—England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales—each of which have legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was often said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire The phrase "The Empire on which the sun never sets" has been used, with variations, to describe global empires so large that at least one part of their territory is always in daylight. It has been used mainly of the Spanish and British empires" because its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous territories.

During the Age of Discovery The Age of Discovery, also known as the Age of Exploration, was a period in history starting in the 15th century and continuing into the early 17th century, during which Europeans and their descendants intensively explored and mapped the world. Historians often refer to the 'Age of Discovery' as the period of Portuguese and Spanish pioneer oceanic in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal It was also the longest-lived of the modern European colonial empires, spanning almost six centuries, from the capture of Ceuta in 1415 to the handover of Macau in 1999 and Spain Territories of the Portuguese empire during the Iberian Union . Territories lost before or due to the Treaties of Utrecht-Baden (1713–1714). Territories lost before or during the Spanish American wars of independence (1811–1828). Territories lost following the Spanish-American War (1898–1899). Territories granted independence during the pioneered European exploration of the globe and in the process, established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires bestowed, England, France The French colonial empire is the set of territories outside Europe that were under French rule primarily from the 1600s to the late 1960s. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the colonial empire of France was the second largest in the world behind the British Empire. The French colonial empire extended over 12,347,000 km² of land at its height in and the Netherlands The Dutch Empire consisted of the overseas territories controlled by the Netherlands from the 17th to the 20th century. The Dutch followed Portugal and Spain in establishing an overseas colonial empire, aided by their skills in shipping and trade and the surge of nationalism accompanying the struggle for independence from Spain. Alongside the began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia.^[3] A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left England (Britain The Kingdom of Great Britain, also known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, was a sovereign state in northwest Europe, in existence from 1707 to 1801. It was created by the merger of the Kingdom of Scotland and the Kingdom of England, under the Acts of Union 1707, to create a single kingdom encompassing the whole of the island of Great, following the 1707 Act of Union The Acts of Union were a pair of Parliamentary Acts passed in 1707 by the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England to put into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union that had been agreed on 22 July 1706, following negotiation between commissioners representing the parliaments of the two countries. The Acts joined the Kingdom of with Scotland) the dominant colonial power Colonialism is the building and maintaining of colonies in one territory by people from another territory. Colonialism is a process whereby sovereignty over the colony is claimed by the metropole and social structure, government and economics within the territory of the colony are changed by the colonists. Colonialism is a certain set of unequal in North America and India. However, the loss of the Thirteen Colonies The Thirteen Colonies were British colonies on the Atlantic coast of North America, which declared their independence in the American Revolution and formed the United States. The colonies, whose territory ranged from what is now Maine to the north and Georgia to the south, were Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, Connecticut, in North America in 1783 after a war of independence The American Revolutionary War or American War of Independence began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen former British colonies in North America, and concluded in a global war between several European great powers was a blow to Britain, depriving it of its most populous colonies. Despite this setback, British attention soon turned towards Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Following the defeat of Napoleonic France The French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire, First French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I in France. It was the dominant power of much of continental Europe during the early 19th Century in 1815, Britain enjoyed a century of effectively unchallenged dominance, and expanded its imperial holdings across the globe. Increasing degrees of autonomy were granted to its white White people is a term which usually refers to human beings characterized, at least in part, by the light pigmentation of their skin. Rather than a straightforward description of skin color, the term white also functions as a color term for race, often referring narrowly to people claiming ancestry exclusively from Europe settler colonies Settler colonialism is a specific colonial formation whereby foreign family units move into a region and reproduce. Land is thus the key resource in settler colonies, whereas natural and human (e.g. labour, existing trade networks, convertible souls) resources are the main motivation behind other forms of colonialism. Colonialism typically ends,, some of which were reclassified as dominions.

The growth of Germany and the United States eroded Britain's economic lead by the end of the 19th century. Subsequent military and economic tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War World War I was a military conflict that lasted from 1914 to 1918 and involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies and the Central Powers. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized in one of the largest wars in history. More than 15 million people were, during which Britain relied heavily upon its Empire. The conflict placed enormous financial strain on Britain, and although the Empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after the war, it was no longer a peerless industrial or military power. The Second World War Albania · Australia · Austria · Azerbaijan · Belarus · Belgium · Brazil · Bulgaria · Burma · Cambodia · Canada · Ceylon (Sri Lanka) · Channel Islands · China · Czechoslovakia · Denmark · Dutch East Indies · Egypt · Estonia · Finland · France · Germany · Gibraltar · Greece · Greenland · Hong Kong · Hungary · Iceland · saw Britain's colonies in South-East Asia Southeast Asia is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India and north of Australia. The region lies on the intersection of geological plates, with heavy seismic and volcanic activity occupied by Japan, which damaged British prestige and accelerated the decline of the Empire, in spite of British victory. Within two years of the end of the war, Britain granted independence to its most populous and valuable colony, India The British Raj is the name given to the period of British colonial rule in South Asia between 1858 and 1947; it can also refer to the dominion itself, and even the region under the rule. The region, commonly called India in contemporary usage, included areas directly administered by Britain, as well as the princely states ruled by individual.

During the remainder of the 20th century, as part of a larger decolonisation Decolonization refers to the undoing of colonialism, the establishment of governance or authority through the creation of settlements by another country or jurisdiction. The term generally refers to the achievement of independence by the various Western colonies and protectorates in Asia and Africa following World War II. This conforms with an movement by European powers, most of the territories of the British Empire became independent, ending with the return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997. Fourteen territories remain under British sovereignty, the British overseas territories The British Overseas Territories are fourteen territories of the United Kingdom, which do not form part of the United Kingdom itself. They are the remnants of the British Empire that have not acquired independence or have voted to remain British territories. After independence, many former British colonies joined the Commonwealth of Nations The Commonwealth of Nations, normally referred to as the Commonwealth and previously as the British Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of fifty-four independent member states. All but two of these countries were formerly part of the British Empire, a free association of independent states. Sixteen Commonwealth nations share their head of state Head of state is the generic term for the individual or collective office that serves as the chief public representative of a monarchy, republic, federation, commonwealth or other kind of state. His or her role generally includes personifying the continuity and legitimacy of the state and exercising the political powers, functions and duties, Queen Elizabeth II Elizabeth II is the queen regnant of 16 independent sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms, listed here in order of length of possession by the Crown: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines,, as Commonwealth realms A Commonwealth realm is a sovereign state within the Commonwealth of Nations that has Elizabeth II as its monarch. The sixteen current realms have a combined land area of 18.8 million km² , and a population of 134 million; all but about two million live in the six most populous states, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Papua New Guinea, New.

Contents 1 Origins (1497–1583) 1.1 Plantations of Ireland 2 "First British Empire" (1583–1783) 2.1 Americas, Africa and the slave trade 2.2 Rivalry with the Netherlands in Asia 2.3 Global struggles with France 3 Rise of the "Second British Empire" (1783–1815) 3.1 Company rule in India 3.2 Loss of the Thirteen American Colonies 3.3 Exploration of the Pacific 3.4 War with Napoleonic France 3.5 Abolition of slavery 4 Britain's imperial century (1815–1914) 4.1 East India Company in Asia 4.2 Rivalry with Russia 4.3 Cape to Cairo 4.4 Changing status of the white colonies 5 World wars (1914–1945) 5.1 First World War 5.2 Inter-war period 5.3 Second World War 6 Decolonisation and decline (1945–1997) 6.1 Initial disengagement 6.2 Suez and its aftermath 6.3 Wind of change 6.4 End of empire 7 Legacy 8 See also 9 References 9.1 Footnotes 9.2 Bibliography 10 External links

Origins (1497–1583)

A replica of The Matthew, John Cabot Giovanni Caboto was an Italian navigator and explorer whose 1497 discovery of North America is commonly held to be the first European voyage to the continent since Norse exploration of the Americas in the early eleventh century. The official position of the Canadian and United Kingdom governments is that he landed on the island of Newfoundland's ship used for his second voyage to the New World The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas. When the term originated in the late 15th century, the Americas were new to the Europeans[note], who previously thought of the world as consisting only of Europe, Asia, and Africa . The term "New World" should not be confused with "modern

The foundation for the British Empire was laid when England The Kingdom of England was, from 927 to 1707, a sovereign state to the northwest of continental Europe. At its height, the Kingdom of England spanned the southern two-thirds of the island of Great Britain and several smaller outlying islands; what today comprises the legal jurisdiction of England and Wales. It had a land border with the Kingdom of and Scotland The Kingdom of Scotland was a state in North-West Europe which existed from 843 until 1707. It occupied the northern third of the island of Great Britain and shared a land border to the south with the Kingdom of England, with which it was united to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, under the terms of the Acts of Union, in 1707. Since 1482, were separate kingdoms. In 1496 King Henry VII of England Henry VII was King of England and Lord of Ireland from his seizing the crown on 22 August 1485 until his death on 21 April 1509, as the first monarch of the House of Tudor, following the successes of Portugal It was also the longest-lived of the modern European colonial empires, spanning almost six centuries, from the capture of Ceuta in 1415 to the handover of Macau in 1999 and Spain Territories of the Portuguese empire during the Iberian Union . Territories lost before or due to the Treaties of Utrecht-Baden (1713–1714). Territories lost before or during the Spanish American wars of independence (1811–1828). Territories lost following the Spanish-American War (1898–1899). Territories granted independence during the in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot Giovanni Caboto was an Italian navigator and explorer whose 1497 discovery of North America is commonly held to be the first European voyage to the continent since Norse exploration of the Americas in the early eleventh century. The official position of the Canadian and United Kingdom governments is that he landed on the island of Newfoundland to lead a voyage to discover a route to Asia via the North Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about 106,400,000 square kilometres , it covers approximately twenty percent of the Earth's surface and about twenty-six percent of its water surface area. The first part of its name refers to the Atlas of Greek mythology, making the Atlantic the ".^[4] Cabot sailed in 1497, and though he successfully made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland Newfoundland (pronounced /ˈnjuːfənlænd/ ( listen); French: Terre-Neuve, Irish: Talamh an Éisc) is a large Canadian island 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) off the east coast of North America, and the most populous part of the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador (mistakenly believing, like Christopher Columbus Christopher Columbus was an Italian navigator, colonizer, and explorer whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. With his four voyages of exploration and several attempts at establishing a settlement on the island of Hispaniola, all funded by Isabella I of five years earlier, that he had reached Asia),^[5] there was no attempt to found a colony In politics and in history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception. The metropolitan state is the state that owns. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but nothing was heard from his ships again.^[6]

No further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Elizabeth I, during the last decades of the 16th century.^[7] The Protestant Reformation had made enemies of England and Catholic Spain.^[4] In 1562, the English Crown sanctioned the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against African towns and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa^[8] with the aim of breaking into the Atlantic trade system. This effort was rebuffed and later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth lent her blessing to further piratical raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic, laden with treasure from the New World.^[9] At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was the first to use the term "British Empire")^[10] were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own empire, to rival those of Spain and Portugal. By this time, Spain was firmly entrenched in the Americas, Portugal had established a string of trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River, later to become New France.

Plantations of Ireland

Though a relative late comer in comparison to Spain and Portugal, England had been engaged during the 16th century in the settlement of Ireland, drawing on precedents dating back to the Norman invasion in 1171.^[11][12] Several people involved in the establishment of the Plantations of Ireland also played a part in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the "West Country men", which included Humphrey Gilbert, Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake, John Hawkins, Richard Grenville and Ralph Lane.^[13]

"First British Empire" (1583–1783)

In 1578, Queen Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration.^[14] That year, Gilbert sailed for the West Indies with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic.^[14][15] In 1583 he embarked on a second attempt, on this occasion to the island of Newfoundland whose harbour he formally claimed for England, though no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England, and was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584. Later that year, Raleigh founded the colony of Roanoke on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.^[16]

In 1603, King James VI of Scotland ascended to the English throne and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations' colonial infrastructure to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies.^[17] The British Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of a private company, the English East India Company, to trade with Asia. This period, until the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after the American War of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has subsequently been referred to as the "First British Empire".^[18]

Americas, Africa and the slave trade

The Caribbean initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies,^[19] but not before several attempts at colonisation failed. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years, and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits.^[20] Colonies in St Lucia (1605) and Grenada (1609) also rapidly folded, but settlements were successfully established in St. Kitts (1624), Barbados (1627) and Nevis (1628).^[21] The colonies soon adopted the system of sugar plantations successfully used by the Portuguese in Brazil, which depended on slave labour, and—at first—Dutch ships, to sell the slaves and buy the sugar. To ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of this trade remained in English hands, Parliament decreed in 1651 that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies. This led to hostilities with the United Dutch Provinces—a series of Anglo-Dutch Wars—which would eventually strengthen England's position in the Americas at the expense of the Dutch. In 1655, England annexed the island of Jamaica from the Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonising the Bahamas.

British colonies in North America, c. 1750. 1: Newfoundland; 2: Nova Scotia; 3: The Thirteen Colonies; 4: Bermuda; 5: Bahamas; 6: British Honduras; 7: Jamaica; 8: Lesser Antilles

England's first permanent settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown, led by Captain John Smith and managed by the Virginia Company. The 1609 wreck of its flagship, the Sea Venture, also left the Virginia Company in possession of Bermuda. Its charter was officially extended to include Bermuda in 1612, but a separate company, the Somers Isles Company was spun-off to manage the archipelago in 1615. Bermuda was more populous, and thrived in the first decades, where Virginia nearly failed. Removing Virginia's population to Bermuda and abandoning the continent was considered. The Virginia Company's charter was revoked in 1624 and direct control was assumed by the crown, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia.^[22] The Newfoundland Company was created in 1610 with the aim of creating a permanent settlement on Newfoundland, but was largely unsuccessful. In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven for puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims.^[23] Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive of many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland was founded as a haven for Roman Catholics (1634), Rhode Island (1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions and Connecticut (1639) for Congregationalists. The Province of Carolina was founded in 1663. With the surrender of Fort Amsterdam in 1664, England gained control of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, renaming it New York. This was formalised in negotiations following the Second Anglo-Dutch War, in exchange for Suriname. In 1681, the colony of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn. The American colonies were less financially successful than those of the Caribbean, but had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far larger numbers of English emigrants who preferred their temperate climates.^[24]

In 1670, King Charles II granted a charter to the Hudson's Bay Company, granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in what was then known as Rupert's Land, a vast stretch of territory that would later make up a large proportion of Canada. Forts and trading posts established by the Company were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent New France.^[25]

Two years later, the Royal African Company was inaugurated, receiving from King Charles a monopoly of the trade to supply slaves to the British colonies of the Caribbean.^[26] From the outset, slavery was the basis of the British Empire in the West Indies. Until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic.^[27] To facilitate this trade, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of black people rose from 25 percent in 1650 to around 80 percent in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10 percent to 40 percent over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies).^[28] For the slave traders, the trade was extremely profitable, and became a major economic mainstay for such western British cities as Bristol and Liverpool, which formed the third corner of the so-called triangular trade with Africa and the Americas. For the transportees, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average mortality rate during the middle passage was one in seven.^[29]

In 1695, the Scottish parliament granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the isthmus of Panama, with a view to building a canal there. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and afflicted by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland—a quarter of Scottish capital^[30] was lost in the enterprise—and ended Scottish hopes of establishing its own overseas empire. The episode also had major political consequences, persuading the governments of both England and Scotland of the merits of a union of countries, rather than just crowns.^[31] This occurred in 1707 with the Treaty of Union, establishing the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Rivalry with the Netherlands in Asia

At the end of the 16th century, England and the Netherlands began to challenge Portugal's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages—the English, later British, and Dutch East India Companies, chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. The primary aim of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, and they focused their efforts on the source, the East Indies archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India. The close proximity of London and Amsterdam across the North Sea and intense rivalry between England and the Netherlands inevitably led to conflict between the two companies, with the Dutch gaining the upper hand in the Moluccas (previously a Portuguese stronghold) after the withdrawal of the English in 1622, and the English enjoying more success in India, at Surat, after the establishment of a factory in 1613.

Fort St. George was founded at Madras in 1639

Although England would ultimately eclipse the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands' more advanced financial system^[32] and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left it with a stronger position in Asia. Hostilities ceased after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Dutch William of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Netherlands and England. A deal between the two nations left the spice trade of the East Indies archipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability, and by 1720, in terms of sales, the English company had overtaken the Dutch.^[32] The English East India Company shifted its focus from Surat—a hub of the spice trade network—to Fort St George (later to become Madras), Bombay (ceded by the Portuguese to Charles II of England in 1661 as dowry for Catherine de Braganza) and Sutanuti (which would merge with two other villages to form Calcutta).

Global struggles with France

Peace between England and the Netherlands in 1688 meant that the two countries entered the Nine Years' War as allies, but the conflict—waged in Europe and overseas between France, Spain and the Anglo-Dutch alliance—left the English a stronger colonial power than the Dutch, who were forced to devote a larger proportion of their military budget on the costly land war in Europe.^[33] The 18th century would see England (after 1707, Britain) rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, and France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage.^[34]

The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philippe of Anjou, a grandson of the King of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for England and the other powers of Europe.^[35] In 1701, England, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted until 1714. At the concluding Treaty of Utrecht, Philip renounced his and his descendants' right to the French throne and Spain lost its empire in Europe.^[36] The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain, Gibraltar and Minorca. Gibraltar, which is still a British territory to this day, became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean. Minorca was returned to Spain at the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, after changing hands twice. Spain also ceded the rights to the lucrative asiento (permission to sell slaves in Spanish America) to Britain.^[37]

Defeat of French fireships at Quebec in 1759

The Seven Years' War, which began in 1756, was the first war waged on a global scale, fought in Europe, India, North America, the Caribbean, the Philippines and coastal Africa. The signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763) had important consequences for the future of the British Empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power there was effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert's Land,^[25] the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. In India, the Carnatic War had left France still in control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, effectively leaving the future of India to Britain. The British victory over France in the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's dominant colonial power.^[38]

Rise of the "Second British Empire" (1783–1815)

Robert Clive's victory at the Battle of Plassey established the Company as a military as well as a commercial power.

Company rule in India

Main article: Company rule in India

During its first century of operation, the English East India Company focused on trade with the Indian subcontinent, as it was not in a position to challenge the powerful Mughal Empire,^[39] which had granted it trading rights in 1617. This changed in the 18th century as the Mughals declined in power and the East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the Compagnie française des Indes orientales, during the Carnatic Wars in the 1740s and 1750s. The Battle of Plassey in 1757, which saw the British, led by Robert Clive, defeat the French and their Indian allies, left the Company in control of Bengal and as the major military and political power in India.^[23] In the following decades it gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local puppet rulers under the threat of force from the British Indian Army, the vast majority of which was composed of native Indian sepoys.^[40] The Company's conquest of India was complete by 1857. The Indian Rebellion that year eventually led to the end of the East India Company and India came to be ruled directly by the British Raj.

Loss of the Thirteen American Colonies

Main article: American Revolution

During the 1760s and 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament's attempts to govern and tax American colonists without their consent,^[41] summarised at the time by the slogan "No taxation without representation". Disagreement over the American colonists' guaranteed Rights as Englishmen resulted in the American Revolution and the outbreak of the American War of Independence in 1775. The following year, the colonists declared the independence of the United States. With assistance from France, Spain, and the Netherlands the United States would go on to win the war in 1783.

Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. The loss of the American colonies marked the end of the "first British Empire".

The loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by historians as the event defining the transition between the "first" and "second" empires,^[42] in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal.^[38][43] The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 seemed to confirm Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.^[44][45] Tensions between the two nations escalated during the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France, and boarded American ships to impress into the Royal Navy men of British birth. The U.S. declared war, the War of 1812, in which both sides tried to make major gains at the other's expense. Both failed and the Treaty of Ghent, ratified in 1815, kept the pre-war boundaries.^[46]

Events in America influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000^[47] defeated Loyalists had migrated from America following independence. The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784.^[48] The Constitutional Act of 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English-speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the French and British communities, and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Britain, with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution.^[49]

Exploration of the Pacific

The voyages of discovery by James Cook in the Pacific Ocean led to the founding of several British colonies, including Australia and New Zealand.

Since 1718, transportation to the American colonies had been a penalty for various criminal offences in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year across the Atlantic.^[50] Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government turned to the newly discovered lands of Australia.^[51] The western coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by the Dutch explorer Willem Jansz in 1606 and was later named by the Dutch East India Company New Holland,^[52] but there was no attempt to colonise it. In 1770 James Cook discovered the eastern coast of Australia while on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific Ocean, claimed the continent for Britain, and named it New South Wales.^[51] In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788.^[51] Britain continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840, at which time the colony's population numbered 56,000, the majority of whom were convicts, ex-convicts or their descendants.^[53] The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold.^[53]

During his voyage, Cook also visited New Zealand, first discovered by Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642, and claimed the North and South islands for the British crown in 1769 and 1770 respectively. Initially, interaction between the native Maori population and Europeans was limited to the trading of goods. European settlement increased through the early decades of the 19th century, with numerous trading stations established, especially in the North. In 1839, the New Zealand Company announced plans to buy large tracts of land and establish colonies in New Zealand. On 6 February 1840, Captain William Hobson and around 40 Maori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi.^[54] This treaty is considered by many to be New Zealand's founding document,^[55] but differing interpretations of the Maori and English versions of the text^[56] have meant that it continues to be a source of dispute.^[57]

War with Napoleonic France

Main article: Napoleonic Wars

Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations.^[58] It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was threatened: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe.

The British Empire following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815^[59]

The Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones in which Britain invested large amounts of capital and resources to win. French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy, which won a decisive victory over a Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. Overseas colonies were attacked and occupied, including those of the Netherlands, which was annexed by Napoleon in 1810. France was finally defeated by a coalition of European armies in 1815. Britain was again the beneficiary of peace treaties: France ceded the Ionian Islands, Malta (which it had occupied in 1797 and 1798 respectively), Seychelles, Mauritius, St Lucia, and Tobago; Spain ceded Trinidad; the Netherlands Guyana, and the Cape Colony. Britain returned Guadeloupe, Martinique, Goree, French Guiana, and Réunion to France, and Java, and Suriname to the Netherlands.

Abolition of slavery

Under increasing pressure from the British abolitionist movement, the British government enacted the Slave Trade Act in 1807 which abolished the slave trade in the Empire. In 1808, Sierra Leone was designated an official British colony for freed slaves.^[60] The Slavery Abolition Act passed in 1833 made not just the slave trade but slavery itself illegal, emancipating all slaves in the British Empire on 1 August 1834.^[61]

Britain's imperial century (1815–1914)

The British Empire in 1897, marked in the traditional colour for imperial British dominions on maps

Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial century" by some historians,^[62][63] around 10,000,000 square miles (25,899,881 km²) of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire.^[64] Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in central Asia.^[65] Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the Pax Britannica,^[66] and a foreign policy of "splendid isolation".^[67] Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been characterised by some historians as "informal empire".^[68][69]

British imperial strength was underpinned by the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the Empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, the so-called All Red Line.^[70]

East India Company in Asia

See also: British Raj An 1876 political cartoon of Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) making Queen Victoria Empress of India. The caption was "New crowns for old ones!"

British policy in Asia during the 19th century was chiefly concerned with protecting and expanding India, viewed as its most important colony and the key to the rest of Asia.^[71] The East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia. The Company's army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to cooperate in arenas outside India: the eviction of Napoleon from Egypt (1799), the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824) and the defeat of Burma (1826).^[65]

From its base in India, the Company had also been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by the Qing dynasty in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China. In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War, and the seizure by Britain of the island of Hong Kong, at that time a minor settlement.^[72]

The end of the Company was precipitated by a mutiny of sepoys against their British commanders, due in part to the tensions caused by British attempts to Westernise India.^[73] The Indian Rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides. Afterwards the British government assumed direct control over India, ushering in the period known as the British Raj, where an appointed governor-general administered India and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India. The East India Company was dissolved the following year, in 1858.^[74]

India suffered a series of serious crop failures in the late 19th century, leading to widespread famines in which at least 10 million people died. The East India Company had failed to implement any coordinated policy to deal with the famines during its period of rule. This changed during the Raj, in which commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect.^[75]

Rivalry with Russia

During the 19th century, Britain and Russia vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the declining Ottoman, Persian and Qing Chinese empires.^[71] This rivalry in Eurasia came to be known as the "Great Game".^[71] As far as Britain was concerned, the defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkey in the Russo-Persian War (1826-1828) and Russo-Turkish War (1828–1829) demonstrated its imperial ambitions and capabilities, and stoked fears in Britain of an overland invasion of India.^[76] In 1839, Britain moved to pre-empt this by invading Afghanistan, but the First Anglo-Afghan War was a disaster for Britain.^[77] When Russia invaded the Turkish Balkans in 1853, fears of Russian dominance in the Mediterranean and Middle East led Britain and France to invade the Crimean Peninsula in order to destroy Russian naval capabilities.^[77] The ensuing Crimean War (1854–56), which involved new techniques of modern warfare,^[78] and was the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial power during the Pax Britannica, was a resounding defeat for Russia.^[77] The situation remained unresolved in Central Asia for two more decades, with Britain annexing Baluchistan in 1876 and Russia Kirghizia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. For a while it appeared that another war would be inevitable, but the two countries reached an agreement on their respective spheres of influence in the region in 1878, and on all outstanding matters in 1907 with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente.^[71] The destruction of the Russian Navy at the Battle of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 also limited its threat to the British.^[79]

Cape to Cairo

The Rhodes Colossus—Cecil Rhodes spanning "Cape to Cairo"

The Dutch East India Company had founded the Cape Colony on the southern tip of Africa in 1652 as a way station for its ships travelling to and from its colonies in the East Indies. Britain formally acquired the colony, and its large Afrikaner (or Boer) population in 1806, having occupied it in 1795 in order to prevent its falling into French hands, following the invasion of the Netherlands by France.^[80] British immigration began to rise after 1820, and pushed thousands of Boers, resentful of British rule, northwards to found their own—mostly short-lived—independent republics, during the Great Trek of the late 1830s and early 1840s. In the process the Voortrekkers clashed repeatedly with the British, who had their own agenda with regard to colonial expansion in South Africa and with several African polities, including those of the Sotho and the Zulu nations. Eventually the Boers established two republics which had a longer lifespan: the South African Republic or Transvaal Republic (1852–77; 1881–1902) and the Orange Free State (1854–1902). In 1902 Britain completed its military occupation of the Transvaal and Free State by concluding a treaty with the two Boer Republics following the Second Boer War 1899–1902.

In 1869 the Suez Canal was opened under Napoleon III, linking the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. The Canal was at first opposed by the British,^[81] but once open its strategic value was recognised quickly. In 1875, the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Ismail Pasha's 44 percent shareholding in the Suez Canal for £4 million. Although this did not grant outright control of the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882.^[82] The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position,^[83] but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople. This came into force in 1904 and made the Canal neutral territory, but de facto control was exercised by the British whose forces occupied the area until 1954.

As French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region threatened to undermine orderly penetration of tropical Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 sought to regulate the competition between the European powers in what was called the "Scramble for Africa" by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims.^[84] The scramble continued into the 1890s, and caused Britain to reconsider its decision in 1885 to withdraw from Sudan. A joint force of British and Egyptian troops defeated the Mahdist Army in 1896, and rebuffed a French attempted invasion at Fashoda in 1898. Sudan was made an Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, a joint protectorate in name, but a British colony in reality.^[84]

British gains in southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion in Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo" railway linking the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich South.^[85] In 1888 Rhodes with his privately owned British South Africa Company occupied and annexed territories subsequently named after him, Rhodesia.

Changing status of the white colonies

The path to independence for the white colonies of the British Empire began with the 1839 Durham Report, which proposed unification and self-government for the two Upper and Lower Canada, as a solution to political unrest there. This began with the passing of the Act of Union in 1840, which created the Province of Canada. Responsible government was first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other British North American colonies. In 1867, Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formed into the Dominion of Canada, a confederation enjoying full self government with the exception of international relations.^[86]

Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901.^[87] The term "dominion status" was officially introduced at the Colonial Conference of 1907, to refer to Canada, Newfoundland, Australia and New Zealand. In 1910, the Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal and Orange Free State were joined together to form the Union of South Africa, which also attained dominion status.^[87]

The last decades of the 19th century saw concerted political campaigns for Irish home rule. Ireland had been absorbed into the United Kingdom with the Act of Union 1800 after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and had suffered a severe famine between 1845 and 1852. Home rule was supported by the British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, who hoped that Ireland might follow in Canada's footsteps as a Dominion within the Empire, but his 1886 Home Rule bill was defeated in Parliament, as many MPs feared that a partially independent Ireland might pose a security threat to Great Britain or be the beginnings of the breakup of the Empire. A second Home Rule bill was also defeated for similar reasons.^[88] A third bill was passed by Parliament in 1914, but not implemented due to the outbreak of the First World War leading to the 1916 Easter Rising.

World wars (1914–1945)

By the turn of the 20th century, fears had begun to grow in Britain that it would no longer be able to defend the metropole and the entirety of the Empire while at the same time maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation".^[89] Germany was rising rapidly as a military and industrial power and was now seen as the most likely opponent in any future war. Recognising that it was overstretched in the Pacific^[90] and threatened at home by the German navy, Britain formed an alliance with Japan in 1902, and its old enemies France and Russia in 1904 and 1907, respectively.^[91]

First World War

Main article: History of the United Kingdom during World War I The Grand Fleet sails for Jutland, 1916.

Britain's fears of war with Germany were realised in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. The British declaration of war on Germany and its allies also committed the colonies and Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support. Over 2.5 million men served in the armies of the Dominions, as well as many thousands of volunteers from the Crown colonies.^[92] Most of Germany's overseas colonies in Africa were quickly invaded and occupied, and in the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and Samoa respectively. The contributions of Australian and New Zealand troops during the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national consciousness at home, and marked a watershed in the transition of Australia and New Zealand from colonies to nations in their own right. The countries continue to commemorate this occasion on ANZAC Day. Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridge in a similar light.^[93] The important contribution of the Dominions to the war effort was recognised in 1917 by the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George when he invited each of the Dominion Prime Ministers to join an Imperial War Cabinet to coordinate imperial policy.^[94]

Under the terms of the concluding Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, the Empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of 1,800,000 square miles (4,662,000 km²) and 13 million new subjects.^[95] The colonies of Germany and the Ottoman Empire were distributed to the Allied powers as League of Nations Mandates. Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togo, and Tanganyika. The Dominions themselves also acquired mandates of their own: South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia) was given to the Union of South Africa, Australia gained German New Guinea, and New Zealand Western Samoa. Nauru was made a combined mandate of Britain and the two Pacific Dominions.^[96]

Inter-war period

The British Empire following the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, at its greatest extent.

The changing world order that the war had brought about, in particular the growth of the United States and Japan as naval powers, and the rise of independence movements in India and Ireland, caused a major reassessment of British imperial policy.^[97] Forced to choose between alignment with the United States or Japan, Britain opted not to renew its Japanese alliance and instead signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, where Britain accepted naval parity with the United States.^[98] This decision was the source of much debate in Britain during the 1930s^[99] as militaristic governments took hold in Japan and Germany helped in part by the Great Depression, for it was feared that the Empire could not survive a simultaneous attack by both nations.^[100] Although the issue of the Empire's security was a serious concern in Britain, at the same time the Empire was vital to the British economy: during the inter-war period, exports to the colonies and Dominions increased from 32 to 39 percent of all exports overseas, and imports increased from 24 to 37 percent.^[101]

In 1919, the frustrations caused by delays to Irish home rule led members of Sinn Féin, a pro-independence party that had won a majority of the Irish seats at Westminster in the 1918 British general election, to establish an Irish assembly in Dublin, at which Irish independence was declared. The Irish Republican Army simultaneously began a guerrilla war against the British administration.^[102] The Anglo-Irish War ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown.^[103] Northern Ireland, consisting of six of the 32 Irish counties which had been established as a devolved region under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, immediately exercised its option under the treaty to retain its existing status within the United Kingdom.^[104]

King George V with the British and Dominion prime ministers at the 1926 Imperial Conference.

A similar struggle began in India when the Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy demand for independence.^[105] Concerns over communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar Conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by the Rowlatt Acts, creating tension,^[106] particularly in the Punjab, where repressive measures culminated in the Amritsar Massacre. In Britain public opinion was divided over the morality of the event, between those who saw it as having saved India from anarchy, and those who viewed it with revulsion.^[106] The subsequent non-cooperation movement was called off in March 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident, and discontent continued to simmer for the next 25 years.

In 1922, Egypt, which had been declared a British protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War, was granted formal independence, though it continued to be a British client state until 1954. British troops remained stationed in Egypt until the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936,^[107] under which it was agreed that the troops would withdraw but continue to occupy and defend the Suez Canal zone. In return, Egypt was assisted to join the League of Nations.^[108] Iraq, a British mandate since 1919, also gained membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from Britain in 1932.^[109]

The ability of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy, independent of Britain, was recognised at the 1923 Imperial Conference.^[110] Britain's request for military assistance from the Dominions at the outbreak of the Chanak crisis the previous year had been turned down by Canada and South Africa, and Canada had refused to be bound by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.^[111][112] After pressure from Ireland and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference issued the Balfour Declaration, declaring the Dominions to be "autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another" within a "British Commonwealth of Nations".^[113] This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster.^[114] The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent.^[114] Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression.^[115] Ireland distanced itself further from Britain with the introduction of a new constitution in 1937, making it a republic in all but name.^[116]

Second World War

Main article: Military history of the United Kingdom during the Second World War The Eighth Army was made up of units from across the Empire and fought in the Western Desert and Italy.

Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa all soon declared war on Germany, but the Irish Free State chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war.^[117] After the German occupation of France in 1940, Britain and the Empire were left standing alone against Germany, until the entry of the Soviet Union to the war in 1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill successfully lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military aid from the United States, but Roosevelt was not yet ready to ask Congress to commit the country to war.^[118] In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met and signed the Atlantic Charter, which included the statement that "the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live" should be respected. This wording was ambiguous as to whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany, or the peoples colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by the British, Americans and nationalist movements.^[119][120]

In December 1941, Japan launched, in quick succession, attacks on British Malaya, the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, and Hong Kong. Japan had steadily been growing as an imperial power in the Far East since its defeat of China in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895,^[121] envisioning a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under its leadership. The Japanese attacks on the British and American possessions in the Pacific had an immediate and long-lasting impact on the British Empire. Churchill's reaction to the entry of the United States into the war was that Britain was now assured of victory and the future of the Empire was safe,^[122] but the manner in which the British rapidly surrendered in some of its colonies irreversibly altered Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power.^[123][124] Most damaging of all was the fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar.^[125] The realisation that Britain could not defend the entire Empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States, which after the war eventually resulted in the 1951 ANZUS Pact between Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America.^[119]

Decolonisation and decline (1945–1997)

Though Britain and the Empire emerged victorious from the Second World War, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, was now in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, to whom the balance of global power had now shifted.^[126] Britain was left virtually bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a $3.5 billion loan from the United States,^[127] the last installment of which was repaid in 2006.^[128]

At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations. The situation was complicated further by the increasing Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union, both nations opposed to the European colonialism of old, though American anti-Communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, which led the US to support the continued existence of the British Empire.^[129]

The "wind of change" ultimately meant that the British Empire's days were numbered, and on the whole, Britain adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies once stable, non-Communist governments were available to transfer power to, in contrast to other European powers like France or Portugal,^[130] which waged costly and ultimately unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to five million, three million of whom were in Hong Kong.^[129]

Initial disengagement

Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, key leaders of the Indian independence movement

The pro-decolonisation Labour government elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the Empire, that of Indian independence.^[131] India's two independence movements—the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League—had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed as to how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified secular Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate Islamic state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest and the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy during 1946 led Attlee to promise independence no later than 1948, but when the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent to Britain's newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, partitioned independence was hastily brought forward to 15 August 1947.^[132] The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan.^[133] Millions of Muslims subsequently crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus in the reverse direction, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of the British Raj, and Ceylon gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan and Ceylon became members of the Commonwealth, though Burma chose not to join.^[134]

The British Mandate of Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India.^[135] The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following Nazi oppression and genocide in the Second World War. Rather than deal with the issue, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve,^[136] which it did by voting for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state.

Following the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin. The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malayan-Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted.^[137] The Malayan Emergency, as it was known, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and British North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-dominated Singapore was expelled from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations.^[138] Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union^[139] and maintained its status until independence in 1984.

Suez and its aftermath

British Prime Minister Anthony Eden's decision to invade Egypt during the Suez Crisis ended his political career and revealed Britain's weakness as an imperial power.

In 1951, the Conservative Party was returned to power in Britain, under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power relied on the continued existence of the Empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India. However, Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would become independent by 1955.^[140]

In 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of the new British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, was to collude with France to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the canal.^[141] Eden infuriated his US counterpart, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion.^[142] Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after Nikita Khrushchev threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency.^[143] Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objective of recapturing the Suez Canal,^[144] UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned.^[145]

The Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage, demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States.^{[146][147][148]} The events at Suez wounded British national pride, leading one MP to describe it as "Britain's Waterloo"^[149] and another to suggest that the country had become an "American satellite".^[150] Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen the British political establishment as "Suez syndrome",^[151] from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.

While the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse.^[152] Britain again soon deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval,^[153] as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States.^[149] Britain maintained a presence in the Middle East for another decade, withdrawing from Aden in 1967, and Bahrain in 1971.

Wind of change

Macmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of "the wind of change blowing through this continent."^[154] Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly.^[155] To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the 1950s—Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya—were added nearly ten times that number during the 1960s.^[154]

British decolonisation in Africa. By the end of the 1960s, all but Rhodesia (the future Zimbabwe) and the South African mandate of South West Africa (Namibia) had achieved independence.

Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968 (see map). British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was complicated by the region's white settler populations, particularly in Rhodesia where racial tensions had led Ian Smith, the Prime Minister, to a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the British Empire in 1965.^[156] Rhodesia remained in a state of civil war between its black and white population until the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, under which Rhodesia was temporarily returned to British colonial rule until elections could be held, under British supervision. The elections were held the following year and won by Robert Mugabe, who became the Prime Minister of the newly independent state of Zimbabwe.^[157]

In the Mediterranean, a guerrilla war waged by Greek Cypriots ended (1960) in an independent Cyprus, with the UK retaining the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo were amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain.^[156]

Most of the UK's West Indies territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two by far largest members.^[158] Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands in the 1970s and 1980s, but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence.^[159] The British Virgin Islands,^[160] Cayman Islands^[161] and Montserrat^[162] opted to retain ties with Britain. Guyana achieved independence from the UK in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.

British territories in the Pacific acquired independence between 1970 (Fiji) and 1980 (Vanuatu), the latter's independence having been delayed due to political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France.^[52] Fiji, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea chose to become Commonwealth realms.

End of empire

The granting of independence to Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe) and the New Hebrides (as Vanuatu) in 1980, and Belize in 1981 meant that, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts (and the acquisition in 1955 of an uninhabited rock in the Atlantic Ocean, Rockall),^[163] the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete.

In 1982, Britain's resolve to defend its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire.^[164] Britain's ultimately successful military response to retake the islands during the ensuing Falklands War was viewed by many to have contributed to reversing the downward trend in the UK's status as a world power.^[165]

The same year, the Canadian government severed its last legal link with Britain by patriating the Canadian constitution from Britain. The 1982 Canada Act passed by the British parliament ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution.^[166] Equivalent acts were passed for Australia and New Zealand in 1986.^[167]

In September 1982, the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese government on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong.^[168] Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, Hong Kong Island itself had been ceded to Britain "in perpetuity", but the vast majority of the colony was constituted by the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99 year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997.^[169] Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China.^[170] A deal was reached in 1984—under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would become a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, maintaining its way of life for at least 50 years.^[171] The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many,^[172] including Charles, Prince of Wales^[173] who was in attendance, "the end of Empire".^[166][174]

Legacy

The UK retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles,^[175] which were renamed the British overseas territories in 2002.^[176] Some are uninhabited except for transient military or scientific personnel; the remainder are self-governing to varying degrees and are reliant on the UK for foreign relations and defence. The British government has stated its willingness to assist any Overseas Territory that wishes to proceed to independence, where that is an option.^[177] British sovereignty of several of the overseas territories is disputed by their geographical neighbours: Gibraltar is claimed by Spain, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are claimed by Argentina, and the British Indian Ocean Territory is claimed by Mauritius and Seychelles.^[178] The British Antarctic Territory is subject to overlapping claims by Argentina and Chile, while many nations do not recognise any territorial claims to Antarctica.

The fourteen British overseas territories

Most former British colonies are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a non-political, voluntary association of equal members, in which the UK has no privileged status. Fifteen members of the Commonwealth continue to share their head of state with the UK, as Commonwealth realms.

Decades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on the independent nations that arose from the British Empire. The Empire established the use of English in regions around the world. Today it is the primary language of up to 400 million people and is spoken by over a billion as a second or foreign language.^[179] The spread of English from the latter half of the 20th century has been helped in part by the cultural influence of the United States, itself a product of the British Empire. The English parliamentary system served as the template for the governments for many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems.^[180] The British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, one of the UK's highest courts of appeal, still serves as the highest court of appeal for several former colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific. British Protestant missionaries who fanned out across the globe often in advance of soldiers and civil servants spread the Anglican Communion to all continents. British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway stations and government buildings, continues to stand in many cities that were once part of the British Empire.^[181] Ball games that were developed in Victorian Britain—association football, cricket, rugby league football, rugby union football, lawn tennis and golf^[182]—were exported, as were the British choice of system of measurement, the imperial system, and the British convention of driving on the left hand side of the road.

Political boundaries drawn by the British did not always reflect homogeneous ethnicities or religions, contributing to conflicts in Kashmir, Palestine, Sudan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka. The British Empire was also responsible for large migrations of peoples. Millions left the British Isles, with the founding settler populations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand coming mainly from Britain and Ireland. Tensions remain between the white settler populations of these countries and their indigenous minorities, and between settler minorities and indigenous majorities in South Africa and Zimbabwe. British settlement of Ireland has left its mark in the form of divided Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland. Millions of people moved to and from British colonies, with large numbers of Indians emigrating to other parts of the Empire. Chinese emigration, primarily from Southern China, led to the creation of Chinese-majority Singapore and small Chinese minorities in the Caribbean. The makeup of Britain itself was changed after the Second World War with immigration to the United Kingdom from the colonies to which it was granting independence.^[183]

See also

	History portal
	Colonialism portal
	British Empire portal

Wikisource has several original texts related to: British Empire

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: British Empire

• Colonial Office
• Crown colony
• British colonization of the Americas
• British Empire and Commonwealth Museum
• British Empire Exhibition
• British Empire in fiction
• Government Houses of the British Empire
• Historiography of the British Empire
• History of the United Kingdom
• Order of the British Empire
• British Imperial Lifeline
• Commonwealth of Nations
• Angevin Empire
• History of capitalism

References

Footnotes

1. ^ Maddison 2001, pp. 98, 242.
2. ^ Ferguson 2004, p. 15.
3. ^ Ferguson 2004, p. 2.
4. ^ ^{a b} Ferguson 2004, p. 3.
5. ^ Andrews 1985, p. 45.
6. ^ Ferguson 2004, p. 4.
7. ^ Canny, p. 35.
8. ^ Thomas, pp. 155–158
9. ^ Ferguson 2004, p. 7.
10. ^ Canny, p. 62.
11. ^ Canny, p. 7.
12. ^ Kenny, p. 5.
13. ^ Taylor, pp. 119,123.
14. ^ ^{a b} Olson, p. 466.
15. ^ Canny, p. 63.
16. ^ Canny, pp. 63–64.
17. ^ Canny, p. 70.
18. ^ Canny, p. 34.
19. ^ James, p. 17.
20. ^ Canny, p. 71.
21. ^ Canny, p. 221.
22. ^ Olson, p. 600.
23. ^ ^{a b} Olson, p. 897.
24. ^ Ferguson 2004, pp. 72–73.
25. ^ ^{a b} Buckner, p. 25.
26. ^ Lloyd, p. 37.
27. ^ Ferguson 2004, p. 62.
28. ^ Canny, p. 228.
29. ^ Marshall, pp. 440–64.
30. ^ Magnusson, p. 531.
31. ^ Macaulay, p. 509.
32. ^ ^{a b} Ferguson 2004, p. 19.
33. ^ Canny, p. 441.
34. ^ Pagden, p. 90.
35. ^ Olson, p. 1045.
36. ^ Olson, p. 1122.
37. ^ Olson, pp. 1121–22.
38. ^ ^{a b} Pagden, p. 91.
39. ^ Canny, p. 93.
40. ^ Olson, p. 995.
41. ^ Ferguson 2004, p. 73.
42. ^ Canny, p. 92.
43. ^ Olson, p. 1026.
44. ^ James, p. 119.
45. ^ Marshall, p. 585.
46. ^ Latimer, pp. 8, 30–34, 389–92.
47. ^ Olson, p. 685.
48. ^ Olson, p. 796.
49. ^ Smith, p. 28.
50. ^ Smith, p. 20.
51. ^ ^{a b c} Olson, p. 808.
52. ^ ^{a b} Olson, p. 806.
53. ^ ^{a b} Olson, p. 87.
54. ^ Olson, p. 1137.
55. ^ "Waitangi Day". History Group, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage. http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/politics/treaty/waitangi-day. Retrieved 13 December 2008.
56. ^ Porter, p. 579.
57. ^ Mein Smith, p. 49.
58. ^ James, p. 152.
59. ^ Dalziel, pp. 64–65.
60. ^ Porter, p. 14.
61. ^ Porter, p. 204.
62. ^ Hyam, p. 1.
63. ^ Smith, p. 71.
64. ^ Parsons, p. 3.
65. ^ ^{a b} Porter, p. 401.
66. ^ Porter, p. 332.
67. ^ Olson, p. 285.
68. ^ Porter, p. 8.
69. ^ Marshall, pp. 156–57.
70. ^ Dalziel, pp. 88–91.
71. ^ ^{a b c d} Olson, p. 478.
72. ^ Olson, p. 293.
73. ^ Olson, p. 567.
74. ^ Olson, p. 568.
75. ^ Marshall, pp. 133–34.
76. ^ James, p. 181.
77. ^ ^{a b c} James, p. 182.
78. ^ Royle, preface.
79. ^ Hodge, p. 47.
80. ^ Smith, p. 85.
81. ^ Olson, p. 1070.
82. ^ Ferguson 2004, pp. 230–33.
83. ^ James, p. 274.
84. ^ ^{a b} Olson, p. 989.
85. ^ Olson, p. 248.
86. ^ Porter, p. 187
87. ^ ^{a b} Olson, p. 376.
88. ^ James, p. 315.
89. ^ O'Brien, p. 1.
90. ^ Brown, p. 667.
91. ^ Lloyd, p. 275.
92. ^ Marshall, pp. 78–79.
93. ^ Lloyd, p. 277.
94. ^ Lloyd, p. 278.
95. ^ Ferguson 2004, p. 315.
96. ^ Olson, p. 658.
97. ^ Goldstein, p. 4.
98. ^ Louis, p. 302.
99. ^ Louis, p. 294.
100. ^ Louis, p. 303.
101. ^ Olson, p. 181.
102. ^ Brown, p. 143.
103. ^ Olson, p. 58.
104. ^ Magee, p. 108.
105. ^ Ferguson 2004, p. 330.
106. ^ ^{a b} James, p. 416.
107. ^ Olson, pp. 400, 1072.
108. ^ Brown, p. 292.
109. ^ Olson, p. 745.
110. ^ McIntyre, p. 187.
111. ^ Brown, p. 68.
112. ^ McIntyre, p. 186.
113. ^ Brown, p. 69.
114. ^ ^{a b} Olson, p. 1157.
115. ^ Olson, p. 800.
116. ^ Kenny, p. 21.
117. ^ Lloyd, pp. 313–14.
118. ^ Gilbert, p. 234.
119. ^ ^{a b} Lloyd, p. 316.
120. ^ James, p. 513.
121. ^ Louis, p. 295.
122. ^ Gilbert, p. 244.
123. ^ Louis, p. 337.
124. ^ Brown, p. 319.
125. ^ James, p. 460.
126. ^ Abernethy, p. 146.
127. ^ Brown, p. 331.
128. ^ "What's a little debt between friends?". BBC News. 10 May 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4757181.stm. Retrieved 20 November 2008.
129. ^ ^{a b} Brown, p. 330.
130. ^ Abernethy, p. 148.
131. ^ Lloyd, p. 322.
132. ^ Smith, p. 67.
133. ^ Lloyd, p. 325.
134. ^ Olson, p. 218.
135. ^ Lloyd, p. 327.
136. ^ Lloyd, p. 328.
137. ^ Lloyd, p. 335.
138. ^ Lloyd, p. 364.
139. ^ Lloyd, p. 396.
140. ^ Brown, pp. 339–40.
141. ^ James, p. 581.
142. ^ Ferguson 2004, p. 355.
143. ^ Ferguson 2004, p. 356.
144. ^ James, p. 583.
145. ^ Olson, p. 398.
146. ^ Brown, p. 342.
147. ^ Smith, p. 105.
148. ^ Burke, p. 602.
149. ^ ^{a b} Brown, p. 343.
150. ^ James, p. 585.
151. ^ Thatcher.
152. ^ Smith, p. 106.
153. ^ James, p. 586.
154. ^ ^{a b} Olson, p. 1165.
155. ^ Louis, p. 46.
156. ^ ^{a b} Olson, p. 945.
157. ^ Olson, p. 715.
158. ^ Olson, p. 1155.
159. ^ Olson, p. 1111.
160. ^ Olson, p. 1133.
161. ^ Olson, p. 276.
162. ^ Olson, p. 753.
163. ^ "1955: Britain claims Rockall". BBC News. 21 September 1955. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/21/newsid_4582000/4582327.stm. Retrieved 13 December 2008.
164. ^ Olson, p. 419.
165. ^ James, p. 629.
166. ^ ^{a b} Brown, p. 594.
167. ^ Brown, p. 689.
168. ^ Brendon, p. 654.
169. ^ Olson, p. 533.
170. ^ Brendon, pp. 654–55.
171. ^ Brendon, p. 656.
172. ^ Brendon, p. 660.
173. ^ "Charles' diary lays thoughts bare". BBC News. 22 February 2006. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4740684.stm. Retrieved 13 December 2008.
174. ^ "BBC - History - Britain, the Commonwealth and the End of Empire". BBC News. http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/endofempire_overview_07.shtml. Retrieved 13 December 2008.
175. ^ "British Overseas Territory definition". Encarta. http://www.encarta.ca/dictionary_701704776/British_Overseas_Territory.html. Retrieved 29 May 2009.
176. ^ House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Overseas Territories Report, p. 145
177. ^ House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee Overseas Territories Report, pp. 146,153
178. ^ "British Indian Ocean Territory". The World Factbook. CIA. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/io.html. Retrieved 13 December 2008.
179. ^ Hogg, p. 424
180. ^ Ferguson 2004, p. 307.
181. ^ Marshall, pp. 238–40.
182. ^ Olsen, pp. 1051–56.
183. ^ Dalziel, p. 135.

Bibliography

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Macaulay, Thomas (1848). The History of England from the Accession of James the Second. Penguin. ISBN 0140431330. Maddison, Angus (2001). The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. ISBN 9264186549. http://books.google.com/?id=6D01BTuzScwC. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Magee, John (1974). Northern Ireland: Crisis and Conflict. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0710079478. http://books.google.com/?id=S5c9AAAAIAAJ. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Magnusson, Magnus (2003). Scotland: The Story of a Nation. Grove Press. ISBN 0802139329. http://books.google.com/?id=sEV4zgXOJLsC. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Marshall, PJ (1998). The Eighteenth Century, The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume II. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199246777. http://books.google.com/?id=G3_GI-K7aWAC. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Marshall, PJ (1996). The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521002540. http://books.google.com/?id=S2EXN8JTwAEC. Retrieved 22 July 2009. McIntyre, W. Donald (1977). The Commonwealth of Nations. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0816607923. http://books.google.com/?id=EbojMikATQwC. Retrieved 22 July 2009. McLean, Iain (2001). Rational Choice and British Politics: An Analysis of Rhetoric and Manipulation from Peel to Blair. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198295294. http://books.google.com/?id=_O_ADWrESYQC. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Mein Smith, Philippa (2005). A Concise History of New Zealand. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521542286. http://books.google.com/?id=F2gQIAAACAAJ. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Olson, James (1996). Historical Dictionary of the British Empire. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 031329366X. http://books.google.com/?id=ol1bAAAACAAJ. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Pagden, Anthony (2003). Peoples and Empires: A Short History of European Migration, Exploration, and Conquest, from Greece to the Present. Modern Library. ISBN 0812967615. http://books.google.com/?id=-RCeAAAACAAJ. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Parsons, Timothy H (1999). The British Imperial Century, 1815-1914: A World History Perspective. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 0847688259. http://books.google.com/?id=81ZlzUsO8EYC. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Payson O'Brien, Phillips (2004). The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902-1922. Routledge. ISBN 0415326117. http://books.google.com/?id=LNbDqOzSvpkC. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Porter, Andrew (1998). The Nineteenth Century, The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume III. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199246785. http://books.google.com/?id=oo3F2X8IDeEC. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Royle, Trevor (2000). Crimea: The Great Crimean War, 1854-1856. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 1403964165. http://books.google.com/?id=MrBnHQAACAAJ. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Smith, Simon (1998). British Imperialism 1750-1970. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052159930X. http://books.google.com/?id=-EJwGwAACAAJ. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Taylor, Alan (2001). American Colonies, The Settling of North America. Penguin. ISBN 0142002100. http://books.google.com/?id=SOqfIAAACAAJ. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Thatcher, Margaret (1993). The Downing Street Years. Harper Collins. ISBN 0060170565. http://books.google.com/?id=Ar0Yvc3-ukAC. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Thomas, Hugh (1997). The Slave Trade: The History of The Atlantic Slave Trade. Picador, Phoenix/Orion. ISBN 0753820560. http://books.google.com/?id=mRFTZ3iz_ncC&q. Retrieved 22 July 2009. Gapes, Mike (2008). HC Paper 147-II House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee: Overseas Territories, Volume II. The Stationery Office. ISBN 0215521501. http://books.google.com/?id=HhsZSMEH5DoC. Retrieved 22 July 2009.

External links

• The British Empire. An Internet Gateway
• The British Empire
• The British Empire audio resources at TheEnglishCollection.com

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British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations Legend Current territory · Former territory * now a Commonwealth Realm · now a member of the Commonwealth of Nations Europe 18th century 1708–1757 Minorca since 1713 Gibraltar 1763–1782 Minorca 1798–1802 Minorca 19th century 1800–1964 Malta 1801-1921 Ireland 1807–1890 Heligoland 1809–1864 Ionian Islands 20th century 1921-1937 Irish Free State North America 17th century 1607–1776 Virginia 1610–1907 Newfoundland since 1619 Bermuda 1620–1691 Plymouth Colony 1629–1691 Massachusetts Bay Colony 1632–1776 Maryland 1636–1776 Connecticut 1636–1776 Rhode Island 1637–1662 New Haven Colony 1663–1712 Carolina 1664–1776 New York 1665–1674 and 1702-1776 New Jersey 1670–1870 Rupert's Land 1674–1702 East Jersey 1674–1702 West Jersey 1680–1776 New Hampshire 1681–1776 Pennsylvania 1686–1689 Dominion of New England 1691–1776 Massachusetts 18th century 1701–1776 Delaware 1712–1776 North Carolina 1712–1776 South Carolina 1713–1867 Nova Scotia 1733–1776 Georgia 1763–1873 Prince Edward Island 1763–1791 Quebec 1763–1783 East Florida 1763–1783 West Florida 1784–1867 New Brunswick 1791–1841 Lower Canada 1791–1841 Upper Canada 19th century 1818–1846 Columbia District / Oregon Country1 1841–1867 Province of Canada 1849–1866 Vancouver Island 1853–1863 Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands 1858–1866 British Columbia 1859–1870 North-Western Territory 1862–1863 Stikine Territory 1866–1871 Vancouver Island and British Columbia 1867–1931 *Dominion of Canada2 20th century 1907–1949 Dominion of Newfoundland3 1Occupied jointly with the United States 2In 1931, Canada and other British dominions obtained self-government through the Statute of Westminster. see Canada's name. 3Gave up self-rule in 1934, but remained a de jure Dominion until it joined Canada in 1949. Latin America and the Caribbean 17th century 1605–1979 *Saint Lucia 1623–1883 Saint Kitts (*Saint Kitts & Nevis) 1624–1966 *Barbados 1625–1650 Saint Croix 1627–1979 *St. Vincent and the Grenadines 1628–1883 Nevis (*Saint Kitts & Nevis) 1629–1641 St. Andrew and Providence Islands4 since 1632 Montserrat 1632–1860 Antigua (*Antigua & Barbuda) 1643–1860 Bay Islands since 1650 Anguilla 1651–1667 Willoughbyland (Suriname) 1655–1850 Mosquito Coast (protectorate) 1655–1962 *Jamaica since 1666 British Virgin Islands since 1670 Cayman Islands 1670–1973 *Bahamas 1670–1688 St. Andrew and Providence Islands4 1671–1816 Leeward Islands 18th century 1762–1974 *Grenada 1763–1978 Dominica since 1799 Turks and Caicos Islands 19th century 1831–1966 British Guiana (Guyana) 1833–1960 Windward Islands 1833–1960 Leeward Islands 1860–1981 *Antigua and Barbuda 1871–1964 British Honduras (*Belize) 1882–1983 *St. Kitts and Nevis 1889–1962 Trinidad and Tobago 20th century 1958–1962 West Indies Federation 4Now the San Andrés y Providencia Department of Colombia Africa 18th century 1792–1961 Sierra Leone 1795–1803 Cape Colony 19th century 1806–1910 Cape Colony 1816–1965 Gambia 1856–1910 Natal 1868–1966 Basutoland (Lesotho) 1874–1957 Gold Coast (Ghana) 1882–1922 Egypt 1884–1966 Bechuanaland (Botswana) 1884–1960 British Somaliland 1887–1897 Zululand 1888–1894 Matabeleland 1890–1980 Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) 1890–1962 Uganda 1890–1963 Zanzibar (Tanzania) 1891–1964 Nyasaland (Malawi) 1891–1907 British Central Africa Protectorate 1893–1968 Swaziland 1895–1920 East Africa Protectorate 1899–1956 Anglo-Egyptian Sudan 20th century 1900–1914 Northern Nigeria 1900–1914 Southern Nigeria 1900–1910 Orange River Colony 1900–1910 Transvaal Colony 1906–1954 Nigeria Colony 1910–1931 South Africa 1911–1964 Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) 1914–1954 Nigeria Colony and Protectorate 1915–1931 South West Africa (Namibia) 1919–1960 Cameroons (Cameroon) 5 1920–1963 Kenya 1922–1961 Tanganyika (Tanzania) 5 1954–1960 Nigeria 5League of Nations mandate Asia 17th Century 1685-1824 Bencoolen (Sumatra) 18th century 1702–1705 Côn Đảo 1757–1947 Bengal (West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh) 1762–1764 Philippines 1795–1948 Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 1796–1965 Maldives 19th century 1819–1826 British Malaya (Peninsular Malaysia and Singapore) 1826–1946 Straits Settlements 1839–1967 Colony of Aden 1841–1997 Hong Kong 1841–1941 Kingdom of Sarawak (Malaysia) 1858–1947 British India (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Burma) 1882–1963 British North Borneo (Malaysia) 1885–1946 Unfederated Malay States 1888–1984 Sultanate of Brunei 1888–1946 Sultanate of Sulu 1891–1971 Muscat and Oman protectorate 1892–1971 Trucial States protectorate 1895–1946 Federated Malay States 1898–1930 Weihai Garrison 1878–1960 Cyprus 20th century 1918–1961 Kuwait protectorate 1920–1932 Iraq5 1921–1946 Transjordan5 1923–1948 Palestine5 1945–1946 South Vietnam 1946–1948 Malayan Union 1946–1963 Sarawak (Malaysia) 1948–1957 Federation of Malaya (Malaysia) since 1960 Akrotiri and Dhekelia (before as part of Cyprus) since 1965 British Indian Ocean Territory 5League of Nations mandate Oceania 18th century 1788–1901 New South Wales 19th century 1803–1901 Van Diemen's Land/Tasmania 1807–1863 Auckland Islands6 1824–1980 New Hebrides (Vanuatu) 1824–1901 Queensland 1829–1901 Swan River Colony/Western Australia 1836–1901 South Australia since 1838 Pitcairn Islands 1841–1907 Colony of New Zealand 1851–1901 Victoria 1874–1970 Fiji7 1877–1976 British Western Pacific Territories 1884–1949 Territory of Papua 1888–1965 Cook Islands6 1889–1948 Union Islands (Tokelau)6 1892–1979 Gilbert and Ellice Islands8 1893–1978 British Solomon Islands9 20th century 1900–1970 Tonga (protected state) 1900–1974 Niue6 1901–1942 *Commonwealth of Australia 1907–1953 *Dominion of New Zealand 1919–1942 Nauru 1945–1968 Nauru 1919–1949 Territory of New Guinea 1949–1975 Territory of Papua and New Guinea10 6Now part of the *Realm of New Zealand 7Suspended member 8Now Kiribati and *Tuvalu 9Now the *Solomon Islands 10Now *Papua New Guinea Antarctica and South Atlantic 17th century since 1659 St. Helena 19th century since 1815 Ascension Island11 since 1816 Tristan da Cunha11 since 1833 Falkland Islands12 20th century since 1908 British Antarctic Territory13 since 1908 South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands12, 13 11Dependencies of St. Helena since 1922 (Ascension Island) and 1938 (Tristan da Cunha) 12Occupied by Argentina during the Falklands War of April–June 1982 13Both claimed in 1908; territories formed in 1962 (British Antarctic Territory) and 1985 (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands)

A history of empires Ancient empires Akkadian · Egyptian · Assyrian · Babylonian · Aksumite · Hittite · Armenian · Persian (Medes · Achaemenid · Parthian · Sassanid) · Macedonian (Ptolemaic · Seleucid) · Indian (Maurya · Kushan · Gupta) · Chinese (Qin · Han · Jin) · Roman (Western Roman · Eastern Roman) · Teotihuacan Medieval empires Byzantine · Hunnic · Arab (Rashidun · Umayyad · Abbasid · Fatimid · Caliphate of Córdoba · Ayyubid) · Moroccan (Idrisid · Almoravid · Almohad · Marinid) · Persian (Tahirid · Samanid · Buyid · Sallarid · Ziyarid) · Ghaznavid · Bulgarian (First · Second) · Benin · Great Seljuq · Oyo · Bornu · Khwarezmian · Timurid · Chola · Mongol (Yuan · Jochid · Chagatayid · Ilkhanid) · Kanem · Serbian · Songhai · Khmer · Carolingian · Holy Roman · Angevin · Mali · Chinese (Tang · Song · Yuan) · Wagadou · Aztec · Inca · Srivijaya · Majapahit · Ethiopian (Zagwe · Solomonic) · Indian (Gurjara Pratihara · Pala) Modern empires Maratha · Sikh · Mughal · Chinese (Ming · Qing) · Ottoman · Persian (Safavid · Afsharid · Zand · Qajar · Pahlavi) · Moroccan (Saadi · Alaouite) · Ethiopian · Portuguese · Spanish · Iberian · Dutch · British · French Napoleonic · Austrian · French colonial · German · German colonial · Russian · Swedish · Austro-Hungarian · Mexican · Brazil · Italian Colonial · Korea · Japan

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Categories: British Empire | Imperialism | Overseas empires | Victorian era | Edwardian era | Superpowers

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