Encyclopedia
The
British Empire was the most extensive empire in world history and for a substantial time was not only a
major power but the foremost power in the world. It was a product of the European
age of discovery, which began with the global maritime explorations of the
Iberian states in the late
15th century, that inaugurated the era of the European global empires.
By 1921, the British Empire held sway over a population of between 470 and 570 million people, approximately one-quarter of the world's population. It covered about 14.3 million square miles , about a quarter of Earth's total land area. Though it has now mostly evolved into the
Commonwealth of Nations,
British influence remains strong throughout the world: in economic practice, legal and
governmental systems,
society, sports , and the
English language itself, to name but a few.
The British Empire was, at one time, referred to as "
the empire on which the sun never sets" because the empire's span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous
colonies.
Background: English Empire
Growth of the overseas empire
The overseas British Empire was rooted in the pioneering maritime policies of the English King
Henry VII, who reigned from 1485 to 1509. Building on commercial links in the
wool trade promoted during the reign of his predecessor King
Richard III, Henry established the modern English
merchant marine system, which greatly expanded English shipbuilding and seafaring. The merchant marine also supplied the basis for the mercantile institutions that would play such a crucial role in
English and, after the union with
Scotland in 1707,
British imperial ventures, including the Massachusetts Bay Company and the
British East India Company. Henry's financial reforms made the
English Exchequer solvent, which helped to underwrite the development of the Merchant Marine. Henry also ordered construction of the first English
dry dock, at
Portsmouth, and made improvements to England's small
navy. Additionally, Henry sponsored the voyages of the
Italian mariner
John Cabot in 1496 and 1497 that established England's first overseas colony - a fishing settlement - in
Newfoundland, which Cabot claimed on behalf of Henry.
Henry VIII and the rise of the Royal Navy
The foundations of sea power, having been laid during
Henry VII's reign, were gradually expanded to protect English trade and open up new routes. King
Henry VIII founded the modern English navy , more than tripling the number of warships and constructing the first large vessels with heavy, long-range guns. He initiated the Navy's formal, centralised administrative apparatus, built new docks, and constructed the network of
beacons and
lighthouses that greatly facilitated coastal
navigation for English and foreign merchant sailors. Henry thus established the munitions-based
Royal Navy that was able to hold off the
Spanish Armada in 1588, and his innovations provided the seed for the imperial navy of later day.
Ireland
The first substantial achievements of the colonial empire stem from the Act for Kingly Title, passed by the Irish parliament in 1541. This statute converted Ireland from a lordship under the authority of the English crown to a kingdom in its own right. It was the starting point for the Tudor re-conquest of Ireland.
By 1550 a committed policy of colonisation of the country had been adopted, which culminated in the Plantation of Ulster in 1610, following the Nine Years war . In the meantime, the
plantations of Ireland formed the templates for the empire, and several people involved in these projects also had a hand in the early colonisation of north America e.g.
Humphrey Gilbert,
Walter Raleigh,
Francis Drake and Ralph Lane.
Elizabethan era
During the reign of the
Tudor Queen Elizabeth I, Sir
Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe in the years 1577 to 1580, only the second to accomplish this feat after
Ferdinand Magellan's expedition.
In 1579, Drake landed somewhere in northern California and claimed for the
English Crown what he named
Nova Albion , though the claim was not followed by settlement. Subsequent maps spell out
Nova Albion to the north of all
New Spain. Thereafter, England's interests outside
Europe grew steadily, promoted by
John Dee, who coined the phrase "British Empire". An expert in navigation, he was visited by many of the early English explorers before and after their expeditions. He was a
Welshman, and his use of the term
"British" fitted with the Welsh origins of Elizabeth's Tudor family, although his conception of empire was derived from
Dante's book
Monarchia.
Humphrey Gilbert followed on Cabot's original claim when he sailed to Newfoundland in 1583 and declared it an English
colony on August 5 at
St John's.
Sir Walter Raleigh organised the first colony in
North Carolina in 1587 at
Roanoke Island. Both Gilbert's Newfoundland settlement and the Roanoke colony were short-lived, however, and had to be abandoned because of food shortages, severe weather, shipwrecks, and hostile encounters with
indigenous tribes on the American continent.
The
Elizabethan era built on the past century's imperial foundations by expanding Henry VIII's navy, promoting
Atlantic exploration by English sailors, and further encouraging maritime trade especially with the
Netherlands and the
Hanseatic League. The nearly twenty year Anglo-Spanish War , which started well for England with the sack of
Cadiz and the repulse of the
Spanish Armada, soon turned Spain's way with a number of serious defeats which sent the Royal Navy into decline and allowed
Spain to retain effective control of the
Atlantic sea lanes, thwarting English hopes of establishing colonies in
North America. However it did give English sailors and shipbuilders vital experience.
Stuart era
In 1604, King
James I of England negotiated the
Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain, and the first permanent English settlement followed in 1607 at
Jamestown, Virginia. During the next three centuries, England extended its influence overseas and consolidated its political development at home with the 1707
Acts of Union, where the
Parliament of England and the Scots Parliament were united in
Westminster, London, as the Parliament of Great Britain, in turn giving birth to the
Kingdom of Great Britain.
Scottish role
There were several pre-union attempts at creating a
Scottish Overseas Empire, with various Scottish settlements in North and South America.
Nova Scotia was perhaps Scotland's greatest opportunity at establishing a permanent presence in the Americas, but its most infamous was the ill fated Darién scheme which attempted to establish a settlement colony and trading post in
Panama to foster trade between Scotland and the
Far East.
After the
Acts of Union 1707 many Scots, especially in
Canada,
Jamaica,
India,
Australia and
New Zealand, took up posts as administrators, doctors, lawyers and teachers in what had become the new British Empire. Progressions in Scotland itself during the Scottish enlightenment led to advancements throughout the empire. Scots settled across the Empire as it developed and built up their own communities such as
Dunedin in New Zealand.
Colonisation
In 1583 Sir
Humphrey Gilbert claimed the island of
Newfoundland as England's for Elizabeth I, reinforcing John Cabot's prior claim to the island in 1497, for Henry VII, as England's first overseas colony. Gilbert's shipwreck prevented ensuing settlement in Newfoundland, other than the seasonal
cod fishermen who had frequented the island since 1497. However, the Jamestown colonists, led by Captain
John Smith, overcame the severe privations of the winter in 1607 to found England's first permanent overseas settlement. The empire thus took shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of the
eastern colonies of
North America, which would later become the original
United States as well as
Canada's
Atlantic provinces, and the colonisation of the smaller islands of the
Caribbean such as
Saint Kitts,
Barbados and
Jamaica.
The sugar-producing colonies of the Caribbean, where
slavery became central to the economy, were at first England's most important and lucrative colonies. The American colonies provided
tobacco,
cotton, and
rice in the south and naval
materiel and
furs in the north were less financially successful, but had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far larger numbers of English emigrants.
England's American empire was slowly expanded by war and colonisation, England gaining control of
New Amsterdam via negotiations following the
Second Anglo-Dutch War. The growing American colonies pressed ever westward in search of new agricultural lands.
During the
Seven Years' War the British defeated the French at the
Plains of Abraham and captured all of
New France in 1760, giving Britain control over the greater part of North America.
Later, settlement of
Australia and
New Zealand created a major zone of British migration. The entire Australian continent was claimed for Britain when
Matthew Flinders proved New Holland and
New South Wales to be a single land mass by completing a circumnavigation of it in 1803. The colonies later became self-governing colonies and became profitable exporters of
wool and
gold.
See also
British colonisation of the Americas, Scottish colonization of the Americas, Welsh colonization of the Americas,
Colonial history of AmericaFree trade and "informal empire"
The old British colonial system began to decline in the 18th century. During the long period of unbroken Whig dominance of domestic political life , the Empire became less important and less well-regarded, until an ill-fated attempt to reverse the resulting "salutary neglect" provoked the
American War of Independence , depriving Britain of her most populous colonies, although British investment continued to play a major role in the United States economy until the First World War.
The period is sometimes referred to as the end of the "first British Empire", indicating the shift of British expansion from the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries to the "second British Empire" in Asia and later also Africa from the 18th century. The loss of the
Thirteen Colonies showed that colonies were not necessarily particularly beneficial in economic terms, since Britain could still profit from trade with the ex-colonies without having to pay for their defence and administration.
Mercantilism, the economic doctrine of competition between nations for a finite amount of wealth which had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, now gave way in Britain and elsewhere to the
laissez-faire economic
liberalism of
Adam Smith and successors like
Richard Cobden.
The lesson of Britain's North American loss — that trade might be profitable in the absence of
colonial rule — contributed to the extension in the 1840s and 1850s of self-governing colony status to white settler colonies in
Canada and
Australasia whose British or European inhabitants were seen as outposts of the "mother country". Ireland was treated differently because of its geographic proximity, and incorporated into the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, which was a result of the
Irish Rebellion of 1798 against British rule.
During this period, Britain also outlawed the
slave trade and soon began enforcing this principle on other nations. By the mid-19th century Britain had largely eradicated the world slave trade.
Slavery itself was abolished in the British colonies in 1834, though the phenomenon of
indentured labour retained much of its oppressive character until 1920.
The end of the old colonial and slave systems was accompanied by the adoption of free trade, culminating in the repeal of the Corn Laws and Navigation Acts in the 1840s. Free trade opened the British market to unfettered competition, stimulating reciprocal action by other countries during the middle quarters of the 19th century.
Some argue that the rise of free trade merely reflected Britain's economic position and was unconnected with any true philosophical conviction. Despite the earlier loss of 13 of Britain's
North American colonies, the final defeat in
Europe of
Napoleonic France in 1815 left Britain the most successful international power. While the
Industrial Revolution at home gave her an unrivalled economic leadership, the
Royal Navy dominated the seas. The distraction of rival powers by European matters enabled Britain to pursue a phase of expansion of her economic and political influence through "informal empire" underpinned by free trade and strategic preeminence.
Between the
Congress of Vienna of 1815 and the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Britain was the world's sole industrialised power, with over 30% of the global industrial output in 1870. As the "workshop of the world", Britain could produce finished manufactures so efficiently and cheaply that they could undersell comparable locally produced goods in foreign markets. Given stable political conditions in particular overseas markets, Britain could prosper through free trade alone without having to resort to formal rule. In the Americas the informal British trade empire was backed by the shared interests of Britain in the tenets of the United States'
Monroe Doctrine, which declared that the New World was no longer open to colonisation or political interference by Europeans. As the United States did not yet have the military strength to enforce this doctrine, the British were largely left with a free hand to enter the new markets in Latin America created after independence from Spain and Portugal, and British commercial supremacy lasted until the outbreak of World War I.
British East India Company
The British East India Company was probably the most successful chapter in the British Empire's history as it was responsible for the annexation of most of the
Indian subcontinent, which would become the British Empire's largest source of revenue, along with the conquest of
Hong Kong,
Singapore,
Ceylon,
Malaya and other surrounding Asian countries, and was thus responsible for establishing Britain's Asian empire, the most important component of the British Empire.
The British East India Company originally began as a joint-stock company of traders and investors based in
Leadenhall Street, in the
City of London, which was granted a Royal Charter by
Elizabeth I in 1600, with the intent to favour trade privileges in
India. The Royal Charter effectively gave the newly created
Honourable East India Company a monopoly on all trade with the
East Indies. The Company transformed from a commercial trading venture to one which virtually ruled India as it acquired auxiliary governmental and military functions, along with a very large private army consisting of local Indian sepoys, who were loyal to their British commanders and were an important factor in Britain's Asian conquest. The British East India Company is regarded by some as the world's first multinational corporation. Its territorial holdings were subsumed by the British crown in 1858, in the aftermath of the events variously referred to as the
Sepoy Rebellion or the
Indian Mutiny.
After the fall of
Mughal Empire, there was no single entity that administered the Indian subcontinent. The area was a patchwork of a multitude of kingdoms. The only common bonds were those of religion as most of the population followed either Hinduism or Islam.
It may be noted here that there was no political entity called India at that time. The Indian subcontinent was a patchwork of many kingdoms, and unlike in Europe, there was no concept of the State as a political institution anywhere in this expanse of land. It was indeed with the absorption of British and western ideas that the concept of India as a single nation arose, much later in time.
Thus, until the establishment of a single administrative and gubernatorial entity by the British, the word India must be taken to represent nothing more than a catchall term for the peninsula south of the Himalayas.
The Company also had interests along the routes to India from
Great Britain. As early as 1620, the company attempted to lay claim to the
Table Mountain region in
South Africa, and later it occupied and ruled
St Helena. Other events of note were The Company's colonization of
Hong Kong and
Singapore, the employment of infamous
Captain Kidd to combat
piracy, the cultivation and production of
tea in
India, the sequestoring of
Napoleon Buonaparte captive on
Saint Helena, and it earned the dubious distinction of having its products be the target of the
Boston Tea Party in
