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The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom (UK), that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1922, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, one-quarter of the world's population, and covered more than : approximately a quarter of Earth's total land area.
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The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom (UK), that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1922, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, one-quarter of the world's population, and covered more than : approximately a quarter of Earth's total land area. As a result, its political, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was often said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" 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 in the 15th and 16th centuries, Spain and Portugal pioneered European exploration of the globe and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires bestowed on Spain and Portugal, England, France and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia. A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left England (following the 1707 Act of Union, Britain) the dominant colonial power in North America and India. However, the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in North America in 1783 after a war of independence was a blow to Britain, depriving it of its most populous colonies. Despite this setback, British attention soon turned towards Africa, Asia and Oceania. Following the defeat of Napoleonic France 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 settler colonies, 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, for which Britain leaned 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. Despite emerging victorious, the Second World War saw Britain's colonies in South-East Asia occupied by Japan, which damaged British prestige and accelerated the decline of the Empire. Within two years of the end of the war, Britain granted independence to its most populous and valuable colony, India.
During the remainder of the 20th century, most of the territories of the Empire became independent as part of a larger global decolonisation movement by the European powers, ending with the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. After independence, many British colonies joined the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states. Some have retained the British monarch, currently Elizabeth II, as their head of state to become independent Commonwealth realms. Fourteen territories remain under British sovereignty, the British overseas territories.
Origins (1497–1583)
The foundation for the British Empire was laid at a time before the creation of Great Britain, when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496 King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Portugal and Spain in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead a voyage to discover a route to Asia via the North Atlantic. Cabot sailed in 1497, and though he successfully made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland (mistakenly believing, like Christopher Columbus five years earlier, that he had reached Asia), there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but nothing was heard from his ships again.
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. The Protestant Reformation had made enemies of England and Catholic Spain. In the Anglo-Spanish Wars, the English Crown sanctioned privateers such as John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in piratical attacks on Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic, laden with treasure from the New World. At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was the first to use the term "British Empire") 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 in colonial settlement in Ireland, drawing on precedents dating back to the Norman invasion in 1171. The 16th century Plantations of Ireland, run by English colonists, were a precursor to the colonies established on the North Atlantic seaboard, and several people involved in these projects also had a hand 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.
"First British Empire" (1583–1783)
In 1578 Queen Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration. 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. 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.
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. 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".
Americas, Africa and the slave trade
The Caribbean initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies, 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. 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). 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.
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, an offshoot of which established a colony on Bermuda, which had been discovered in 1609. The Company's charter was revoked in 1624 and direct control was assumed by the crown, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia. 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. 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. In 1664, England gained control of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (renamed New York) via 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.
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.
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.
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. 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). 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.
In 1695 the Scottish parliament granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which proceeded in 1698 to establish a settlement 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 was lost in the enterprise—and ended Scottish hopes of establishing its own overseas empire. The episode also had major political consequences, persuading both England and Scotland of the merits of a union of countries, rather than just crowns. This was achieved in 1707 with the Treaty of Union, establishing the United 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 Indonesian 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. Though England would ultimately eclipse the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands's more advanced financial system 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 Indonesian 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. 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. 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.
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. In 1701, Britain, 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. 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 overseas 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.
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, the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable 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.
Rise of the "Second British Empire" (1783–1815)
Company rule in India
During its first century of operation, the English East India Company focused on trade, rather than empire building, with the Company no match for the powerful Mughal Empire, which had granted the Company trading rights in 1617. Company interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the Mughal Empire declined in power and the East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the La Compagnie française des Indes orientales, during the Carnatic Wars in south-eastern India in the 1740s and 1750s. The Battle of Plassey, 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. 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. The Company's conquest of India was complete by 1857.
Loss of the Thirteen American Colonies
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, summarised at the time by the slogan "No taxation without representation". Disagreement over the American colonists' guaranteed Rights as Englishmen turned to violence and, in 1775, the American War of Independence began. The following year, the colonists declared the independence of the United States and, with assistance from France, Spain and the Netherlands would go on to win the war in 1783.
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, 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. 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. 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 peace treaty ratified in 1815 kept the pre-war boundaries.
Events in America influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000 defeated Loyalists had migrated from America following independence. The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John River in Nova Scotia felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784. 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.
Exploration of the Pacific
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. 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. The western coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by a Dutch explorer in 1606 and was later named by the Dutch East India Company New Holland, 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. 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. Britain continued to transport convicts to Australia until 1840, at which time the colony's population numbered 56,000, the majority of whom were convicts, ex-convicts or their descendants. The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold.
During his voyage, Cook also visited New Zealand, first discovered by Dutch sailors 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. This treaty is considered by many to be New Zealand's founding document, but differing interpretations of the Maori and English versions of the text have meant that it continues to be a source of dispute.
War with Napoleonic France
Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations. 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 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 and 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 abolitionist movement, Britain 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. 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.
Britain's imperial century (1815–1914)
Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial century" by some historians, around of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire. Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in central Asia. Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the Pax Britannica, and a foreign policy of "splendid isolation". 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 nominally independent countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been characterised by some historians as an "informal empire".
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.
East India Company in Asia
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. 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).
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.
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. The 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.
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.
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 Chinese Manchu empires. This rivalry in Eurasia came to be known as the "Great Game". 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. In 1839, Britain moved to pre-empt this by invading Afghanistan, but the First Anglo-Afghan War was a disaster for Britain. 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. The ensuing Crimean War (1854–56), which involved new techniques of modern warfare, and was the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial power during the Pax Britannica, was a resounding defeat for Russia. 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.
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 it falling into French hands, following the invasion of the Netherlands by France. 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, 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. The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position, 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. 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 Madhist 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.
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. In 1888 Rhodes with his privately owned British South Africa Company occupied and annexed territories 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 Canadian provinces, as a solution to political unrest there. This was achieved with the passing of the British North America Act in 1867, where Canada was labelled a "dominion". Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government in 1900, New Zealand as a dominion, and Australia as a commonwealth. The term "dominion status" was officially introduced at the Imperial 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, also with dominion status.
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 the mainland or be the beginnings of the breakup of the Empire. A second Home Rule bill was also defeated for similar reasons. 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". 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 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.
First World War
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. 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. 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.
Under the terms of the concluding Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, the Empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of and 13 million new subjects 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.
Inter-war period
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. 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. This decision was the source of much debate in Britain during the 1930s as right-wing, 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. 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.
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 guerilla war against the British administration. The Anglo-Irish War ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The 26 counties of the south were formed into the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown, while the six counties of the province of Northern Ireland which had been established in 1920 remained a part of the United Kingdom.
A similar struggle began in India when the Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy demand for independence. Concerns over communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar Conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by the Rowlatt Acts, creating tension, 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. 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, 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. Iraq, a British mandate since 1919, also gained membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from Britain in 1932.
The ability of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy, independent of Britain, was recognised at the 1923 Imperial Conference. 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. After pressure from Ireland and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference declared 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". This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster. 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. Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression. Ireland distanced itself further from Britain with the introduction of a new constitution in 1937, making it a republic in all but name.
Second World War
Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions. Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand all soon declared war on Germany, but the Irish Free State chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war. 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. 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.
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, 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, but the manner in which the British rapidly surrendered irreversibly altered Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power. Most damaging of all was the fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar. 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 the three nations, but excluding Britain itself.
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 literally 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. Britain itself was left virtually bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a $3.5 billion loan from the United States, the last installment of which was repaid in 2006.
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.
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, 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.
Initial disengagement
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