HISTORY38 - British Empire

This article is about the history of the British Empire.  The story will cover the period from the creation of the Empire in the early 1700s, through its expansion and world dominance, to its decline in the latter part of the 20^th century.

 

The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It grew out of the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England between the late 16^th and early 18^th centuries.  At its height, it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power.  By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, 23% of the world population at the time, and by 1925, it covered 13,500,000 square miles, 24% of the Earth's total land area.  As a result, its constitutional, legal, linguistic, and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was described as "the empire on which the sun never sets,” as the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories.

Major sources for this article include “British Empire,” an extremely well-researched, succinct, and well-organized article on Wikipedia, plus numerous other online sources.

 Origins (1497-1583)

The Kingdom of England had been a sovereign state on the Island of Great Britain from July 12, 927, when it emerged from various Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.  In 1542, the Kingdom of Wales, on the west side of the Island of Great Britain, was annexed by Kingdom of England.

Many historians consider that the British Empire began in 1707 when the Kingdom of England joined with the Kingdom of Scotland to create the Kingdom of Great Britain, or United Kingdom for short.  That followed over two centuries of worldwide English exploration and colonization that became the foundation of the initial British Empire.

In 1497, commissioned by King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, Englishman John Cabot led a voyage to discover a route to Asia via the North Atlantic. This was five years after the European discovery of America, but he made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland, and, mistakenly believing (like Christopher Columbus) that he had reached Asia, there was no attempt to found a colony.

No attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until the last decades of the 16^th century. The Protestant Reformation in the first half of the 16^th century turned England and Catholic Spain into implacable enemies. In 1562, England’s Queen Elizabeth I encouraged privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa, with the aim of breaking into the Atlantic slave trade. This effort was rebuffed and later, as the undeclared Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604) intensified, Elizabeth I gave her blessing to further privateering raids against 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 Englishmen were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own empire.  By this time, Spain had become the dominant power in the Americas and was exploring the Pacific Ocean, Portugal had established trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River area, later to become New France.

 

Queen Elizabeth I encouraged the first English explorations of the world's oceans - with privateers interdicting Spanish treasure ships returning from the Americas.

English Overseas Possessions (1583-1707)

Although England tended to trail behind Spain, Portugal, and France in establishing overseas colonies, England had established its first colony (albeit in the British Isles) in 1556 in Ireland by settling it with Protestants from England.

In 1583, under a patent from Queen Elizabeth I for discovery and overseas exploration, Humphrey Gilbert claimed the harbor of the Island of Newfoundland, although 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 Roanoke Colony on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.      

In 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended (as James I) 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 infrastructures to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies. 

The forerunner of the British Empire began to take shape during the early 17^th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of the public joint-stock East India Company, granted by royal charter from Queen Elizabeth I, to administer colonies and overseas trade in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia.  The Company soon established its first trading post in the East Indies, at Bantam on the island of Java, and others, beginning with Surat, on the coasts of what is now India and Bangladesh.

The Caribbean initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies, but not before several attempts at colonization 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 Saint Lucia (1605) and Grenada (1609) rapidly folded, but settlements were successfully established in Saint Kitts (1624), Barbados (1627), and Nevis (1628). The colonies soon adopted the system of sugar plantations successfully used by the Portuguese in Brazil - plantations which depended on slave labor, 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 colonizing 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.  Bermuda was settled and claimed by England in 1609. 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. With the surrender of Fort Amsterdam in 1664, England gained control of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, renaming it New York.  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.

 

Captain John Smith established the first permanent English settlement in America at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.

In 1670, Charles II incorporated by royal charter the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in the area known as Rupert's Land, which would later form a large proportion of the Dominion of Canada.  Forts and trading posts established by the HBC 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 Empire in the West Indies.  Until the abolition of its slave trade in 1807, Britain transported a third of all slaves shipped across the Atlantic - 3.5 million Africans.  To facilitate this trade, forts were established on the coast of West Africa.  In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25% in 1650 to around 80% in 1780, and in the American colonies from 10% to 40% over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies).  For the transported slaves, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets caused an average mortality rate of one in seven during the transatlantic passage.

At the end of the 16^th century, England and the Netherlands began to challenge Portugal's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies. The primary aim of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, an effort focused mainly on two regions:  the East Indies archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India. There, they competed for trade supremacy with Portugal and with each other.  Although England eclipsed the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands' more advanced financial system and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17^th 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 to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability.

The English overseas possessions, also known as the English colonial empire, comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonized, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the Kingdom of England during the centuries before the Acts of Union of 1707 between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland that created the Kingdom of Great Britain. These many English possessions - consisting principally of lands in present day Canada, along the southern shore of Hudson Bay; colonies along the eastern coast of the present-day United States; islands in the West Indies; and trading posts along the coast of present-day India and Bangladesh, and on the Island of Java in the East Indies - then became the foundation of the British Empire.

 

The Kingdom of Great Britain and the British Isles in 1707.

“First” British Empire (1707-1783)

The 18^th century saw the new United Kingdom rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, with France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage. 

Territorial Expansion.  Great Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Empire fought the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) that was concluded by the Treaty of Utrecht.  Philip V of Spain renounced his and his descendants' claim to the French throne, and Spain ceded the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Milan, and Sardinia to Austria, and ceded Sicily to Savoy.  The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain:  Gibraltar and the Mediterranean Island of Menorca. Gibraltar became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean.

In the East Indies, British and Dutch merchants continued to compete in spices and textiles, with textiles becoming the larger trade, by 1720.  In terms of sales, the British East Indian Company had overtaken the Dutch.

During the middle decades of the 18^th century, there were several outbreaks of military conflict on the Indian subcontinent, as the East India Company and its French counterpart, struggled alongside local rulers to fill the vacuum that had been left by the decline of the indigenous Mughal Empire. The Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which the British defeated the hereditary leader Nawab of Bengal and his French allies, left the British East India Company in control of the Bengal region in Southeast Asia, and as the major military and political power in India.

In the following decades, the British East India Company gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local rulers under the threat of force from the provincial armies, the vast majority of which were composed of Indian soldiers led by British officers.  The British and French struggles in India became but one theater of the global Seven Years' War (1756–1763) involving France, Britain, and the other major European powers.

The signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1763, that ended the Seven Years’ War, had important consequences for the future of the British Empire.  In North America, France's future as a colonial power 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 the ceding of Louisiana to Spain.  Spain ceded Florida to Britain.  Along with its victory over France in India, the Seven Years' War, therefore, left Britain as the world's most powerful maritime power.

Great Britain was also looking to colonize lands in Central America.  On the Mosquito Coast of today’s Nicaragua, Spain had failed to have significant influence, leaving the area free to receive settlers from Great Britain.  By the late 1700s, the British had established settlements and plantations to grow export crops and as bases for exploitation of timber resources, especially mahogany. 

Conflict also occurred between Britain and Spain along the southeastern coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.   During the 18^th century, the Spanish attacked British settlers whenever the two powers were at war. The Spanish never settled in the region, however, and the British always returned to expand their trade and settlements, and established the British Honduras colony there in 1749.   

 

The British Empire in 1763 was the result of commercial enterprise and Britain's military successes.

Loss of the Thirteen American Colonies.  During the 1760s and early 1770s, relations between the thirteen American 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.  This was summarized at the time by the slogan "No taxation without representation,” a perceived violation of the guaranteed rights of Englishmen. The American Revolution began with a rejection of Parliamentary authority and moved towards self-government. In response, Britain sent troops to reimpose direct rule, leading to the outbreak of war in 1775. The following year, in 1776, the United States declared independence. The entry of French and Spanish forces into the war tipped the military balance in the Americans' favor and after a decisive defeat at Yorktown in 1781, Britain began negotiating peace terms. American independence was acknowledged at the Peace of Paris in 1783.

The loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by some 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.

The war in America influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000 defeated Loyalists had migrated from the new United States 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. 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.

Rise of the “Second” British Empire (1783-1815)

The voyages of Captain James Cook to Australia and New Zealand, and Great Britain’s victories in the Napoleonic Wars, added further possessions to the Empire. 

Exploration of the Pacific.  Since 1718, exile to the American colonies had been a penalty for various offenses in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year.  Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the American colonies in 1783, the British government turned to Australia. The coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by the Dutch in 1606, but there was no attempt to colonize it.  In 1770 James Cook charted the eastern coast while on a scientific voyage, 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 New South Wales until 1840, to Tasmania until 1853, and to Western Australia until 1868.)

Unusually, Australia was claimed through proclamation.  Indigenous Australians were considered too uncivilized to require treaties.  Colonization brought disease and violence, that together with the deliberate dispossession of land and culture, were devastating to these peoples.

The Australian colony would become a profitable exporter of wool and gold, and for a time, its capital city, Melbourne, the richest city in the world.

During his voyage, Cook visited New Zealand, known to Europeans from the 1642 voyage of Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, and claimed both the North and the South islands for the British crown in 1769 and 1770 respectively. Initially, interaction between the indigenous Māori population and Europeans was limited to the trading of goods.

European settlement in New Zealand increased through the early decades of the 19^th 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 February 6, 1840, Captain William Hobson and around 40 Maori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi, the basis of significant British settlement in New Zealand.

 

English Captain James Cook opened up the Pacific Ocean for the British Empire.

War with Napoleonic France. Early in the 19^th century, Britain was challenged 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 at risk: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe.

In the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), 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. Britain attacked and occupied overseas colonies, 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 Mediterranean Ionian Islands and Malta, the Indian Ocean Islands of Mauritius and Seychelles, and the Caribbean Islands of Saint Lucia and Tobago; Spain ceded the Caribbean Island of Trinidad; the Netherlands ceded Netherlands Guyana on the north coast of South America, and South Africa’s Cape Colony.  Britain returned the Caribbean Islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, French Guiana on South America’s north coast, and the Indian Ocean Island of Reunion, to France; and the East Indies Island of Java, and Suriname, on the northeast coast of South America, to the Netherlands, while gaining control of the Island of Ceylon, in the Indian Ocean, and the Heligoland archipelago in the North Sea.

Tensions between Britain and the United States escalated again during the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France and boarded American ships to impress men into the Royal Navy.  In the War of 1812 that followed, the U.S. invaded Canadian territory. In response, Britain invaded the U.S., but the pre-war boundaries were reaffirmed by the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, ensuring Canada's future would be separate from that of the United States.

Abolition of Slavery.  With the advent of the Industrial Revolution (from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840), goods produced by slavery became less important to the British economy. Added to this was the cost of suppressing regular slave rebellions. With support from the British abolitionist movement, Parliament enacted the Slave Trade Act in 1807, which abolished slave trade in the Empire.   (The Slavery Abolition Act, passed in 1834, abolished slavery in the British Empire  - with the exception of the territories administered by the East India Company and Ceylon, where slavery was ended in 1844.  Under the Act, slaves were granted full emancipation after a period of four to six years of "apprenticeship.” Facing further opposition from abolitionists, the apprenticeship system was abolished in 1838.) 

 

The British Empire in 1815 included eastern Canada, British Honduras, British Guiana, Africa's Cape Colony, southeastern Australia, southeastern India, and assorted islands in the East and West Indies, Indian Ocean, and the North Sea.

Britain’s Imperial Century (1815-1914)

Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial century" by some historians, around 10 million square miles of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire.  Spain’s colonial empire had crumbled in the 1820s and 1830s with successful independence movements in Mexico, Central America, and South America.  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.  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.

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

East India Company Rule and the British Raj in India.  The East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia. The Company's provincial army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), and the two continued to cooperate in arenas outside India: the eviction of the French from Egypt (1799), the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Penang Island (1786), Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824), and the defeat of Burma (1826).

From its base in India, the Company had 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 resulted in the seizure by Britain of Hong Kong Island, at that time a minor settlement, and other ports, including Shanghai.

During the late 18^th and early 19th centuries, the British Crown began to assume an increasingly large role in the affairs of the East India Company.  A series of acts of Parliament were passed, including the Regulating Act of 1773, Pitt's India Act of 1784, and the Charter Act of 1813 which regulated the Company's affairs and established the sovereignty of the Crown over the territories that it had acquired. The Company's eventual end was precipitated by the Indian Rebellion in 1857, a conflict that had begun with the mutiny of Indian troops under British officers. The rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides. The following year the British government dissolved the Company and assumed direct control over India through the Government of India Act 1858, establishing the British Raj, where an appointed governor-general administered India, and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India. India became the empire's most valuable possession, "the Jewel in the Crown,” and was the most important source of Britain's strength.

Rivalry with Russia.  During the 19^th century, Britain and the Russian Empire vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the declining Ottoman Empire, Qajar dynasty, and Qing dynasty. As far as Britain was concerned, defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkey 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 the Middle East led Britain and France to invade the Crimean Peninsula to destroy Russian naval capabilities. The ensuing Crimean War (1854-1856)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 annexing 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. The destruction of the Russian Navy by the Japanese at the Battle of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 limited its threat to the British.

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 Boer population in 1806. 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 late 1830s and early 1840s.  Eventually, the Boers established two republics that had a longer lifespan:  South African Republic, or Transvaal Republic, (1852–1877; 1881–1902) and the Orange Free State (1854–1902).  In 1902, Britain occupied both republics, concluding a treaty with the two Boer republics following the Second Boer War (1899–1902).

In 1869, the Suez Canal (built by the French for Egypt) opened, linking the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. Initially the Canal was opposed by the British, but once opened, its strategic value was quickly recognized.  In 1875, the Conservative English government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Isma'il Pasha's 44% shareholding in the Suez Canal.  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. Although Britain controlled Egypt into the 20^th century, it was officially part of the Ottoman Empire and not part of the British Empire. The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position, but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople, which made the Canal officially neutral territory.

 

Portrait of the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.  Initially opposed to the Canal, Great Britain soon realized the strategic importance of the waterway to the British Empire.

There were also competing colonization efforts in tropical Africa.  English, French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region undermined orderly colonization.  The Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 was held 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 Sudanese army in 1896 and rebuffed an attempted French invasion of East Africa in 1898.  Sudan was nominally made a joint dominion, but was a British colony in reality.

British gains in Southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion in Southern Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo" railway linking the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich south of the continent.  During the 1880s and 1890s, Rhodes, with his privately owned British South Africa Company, occupied and annexed territories named after him, Rhodesia.

Changing Status of the Colonies.  The path to independence for the colonies of the British Empire began with the 1839 Durham Report, which proposed unification and self-government for Upper and Lower Canada, as a solution to political unrest which had erupted in armed rebellions in 1837. 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.  With the passage of the British North America Act, 1867, by the British Parliament, the Province of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formed into Canada, a confederation enjoying full self-government, with the exception of international relations.  Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901. The term "dominion status" was officially introduced at the Colonial Conference of 1907.

The last decades of the 19^th century saw concerted political campaigns for Irish home rule. Ireland had been united with Britain into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the Act of Union 1800, after the Irish Rebellion of 1798. 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 a succession of Home Rule bills between 1886 and 1914 were defeated.

World Wars (1914-1945)

First World War.  With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Britain quickly invaded and occupied most of Germany's overseas colonies in Africa.  In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and German Samoa, respectively.

The British colonies and dominions provided invaluable military, financial and material support to World War I.  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. Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridge in a similar light.

Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I, signed in 1919, the British Empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of 1,800,000 square miles and 13 million new subjects.  Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togoland, and Tanganyika. The Dominions themselves acquired mandates of their own: Union of South Africa gained South West Africa (modern-day Namibia), Australia gained New Guinea, and New Zealand gained Western Samoa.  Nauru was made a combined mandate with the British western Pacific territories.

 

The maximum extent of the British Empire occurred in 1919 with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I.

Inter-War Period.  In 1919, the frustrations caused by delays to Irish home rule led Ireland to declare its independence from the United Kingdom. The Irish Republican Army simultaneously began a guerrilla war against the British administration. The Irish War of Independence 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.  Northern Ireland was partitioned from Ireland and remained with the United Kingdom.

A similar struggle began in India, when the Government of Indian Act 1919 failed to satisfy the demand for independence. Concerns over communist and foreign plots, continued war-time strictures, and repressive measures, caused discontent that simmered 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 in joining the League of Nations.  Iraq, a British mandate since 1920, gained membership of the League in its own right, after achieving independence from Britain in 1932.

In Palestine, Britain was presented with the problem of mediating between the Arabs and increasing numbers of Jews.  As the threat of war with Germany increased during the 1930s, Britain judged the support of Arabs as more important than the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and shifted to a pro-Arab stance, limiting Jewish immigration, and in turn triggering a Jewish insurgency.

After pressure from the Irish Free State and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference issued the Balfour Declaration of 1926, 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.” 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 free 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.  In 1937, the Irish Free State renamed itself Ireland.

Second World War.  World War II, though won by the Allies, including Great Britain, had permanent consequences for the future of the British Empire. The manner in which British forces were rapidly defeated in the Far East irreversibly harmed Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power, including, particularly, the Fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar. The realization that Britain could not defend its entire Empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which were threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States. The war weakened the Empire in other ways: undermining Britain's control of politics in India, inflicting long term economic damage, and irrevocably changing geopolitics by pushing the Soviet Union and the United States to the center of the global stage.

Decolonization 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 in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, who now held the balance of global power.  Britain was left essentially bankrupt.

At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule, outside the United Kingdom itself, fell from 700 million to 5 million, 3 million of whom were in Hong Kong.

Initial Disengagement.  The Dominion of Ireland completed its separation from the United Kingdom, when it was officially declared an independent republish in 1949. 

India had been campaigning for independence for decades.  In 1947 Britain finally granted independence and partitioned India into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan.  The borders drawn by the British left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states.  Millions of Muslims crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus vice versa, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives.  Burma, which had been administered as part of the British Raj, and Sri Lanka gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka became members of the British Commonwealth, while Burma chose not to join.

The British Mandate in Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India. The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following the Holocaust, while Arabs were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state.  Frustrated by the intractability of the problem, attacks by Jewish paramilitary organizations, and the increasing cost of maintaining its military presence, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve. The UN General Assembly subsequently voted for a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The State of Israel declared independence and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War broke out, during which the territory of the former Mandate was partitioned between Israel and the surrounding Arab states.

Following the surrender of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in the Malay Peninsula in Southeast Asia 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. The Malayan Emergency, as it was called, 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 North Borneo, joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965, Chinese-majority Singapore was expelled from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations and became an independent city-state.

Suez and its Aftermath.  In 1952, Britain agreed to withdraw its troops from the Suez Canal and granted independence to Sudan in 1956.  In July 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser unilaterally nationalized the Suez Canal.  Britain tried to intervene militarily.  Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objective, UN intervention and U.S. economic pressure (over concerns of a wider conflict) forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces. The Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage and its end as a first-rate power, demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States.

While the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse.  Britain again deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958), and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval.  Although Britain granted Kuwait independence in 1961, it continued to maintain a military presence in the Middle East for another decade.

In 1968, Britain announced that its troops would be withdrawn from major military bases East of Suez, which included the bases in the Middle East, and primarily from Malaysia and Singapore by the end of 1971.  The British granted independence to the Maldives in 1965, but continued to station a garrison there until 1976, withdrew from Aden in 1967, and granted independence to Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates in 1971.

Winds of Change.  Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968.  In Rhodesia, the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the white minority resulted in a civil war that lasted until the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, which set the terms for recognized independence in 1980, as the new nation of Zimbabwe.

 

Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968.  Beige-colored areas were under British military administration after World War II.  The different shades of pink differentiate decolonization by decade.

In Cyprus, a guerrilla war waged by Greek Cypriots against British rule, was ended in 1959 by the London and Zürich Agreements, which resulted in Cyprus being granted independence in 1960. The Mediterranean colony of Malta was amicably granted independence from the United Kingdom in 1964 and became the country of Malta.

Most of the United Kingdom’s Caribbean 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 largest members. Jamaica attained independence in 1962, as did Trinidad and Tobago. Barbados achieved independence in 1966, and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands, including the Bahamas, 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. The British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, and Montserrat opted to retain ties with Britain, while Guyana achieved independence 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.

British territories in the Pacific acquired independence in the 1970s, beginning with Fiji in 1970, and ending with Vanuatu in 1980. Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu became Commonwealth realms.

End of the Empire.  By 1981, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts, the process of decolonization that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve in defending 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.  Britain's successful military response to retake the islands during the ensuing Falklands War contributed to reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world power.

The 1980s saw Canada, Australia, and New Zealand sever their final constitutional links with Britain.

In 1984, Brunei, Britain's last remaining Asian protectorate, was granted independence.

Hong Kong had been acquired by Britain from China on a 99-year lease, due to expire in 1997.  Britain wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China.  A deal was reached for Hong Kong to become a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China, maintaining its way of life for at least 50 years. The handover ceremony, ending on July 1, 1997 marked for many, "the end of Empire.”

Monarchy

The United Kingdom is a Constitutional Monarchy in which the reigning monarch (king or queen who is the head of state at any given time) does not make political decisions.  All political decisions are made by the government and elected Parliament.  This constitutional state of affairs is the result of a long history of constraining and reducing the political power of the monarch, beginning with Magna Carta in 1215.

Although the king or queen no longer has a political or executive role, he or she continues to play an important part in the life of the nation.  As Head of State, the Monarch undertakes constitutional and representational duties which have developed over one thousand years of history.  In addition to these State duties, the Monarch has a less formal role as “Head of Nation,” acting as the focus for national identity, unity and pride, and giving a sense of stability and continuity.

 

The 12 monarchs who have served the British Empire since 1707.

No.	Period	Monarch         b - d	Comments
1	1702-1714	Anne                           1655-1714	Second daughter of James II, the last Catholic monarch of England.  Anne had 17 pregnancies but only one child survived – William, who died of smallpox age 11. A staunch Protestant, Anne was 37 years old when she succeeded to the throne. The Duke of Marlborough commanded the English Army in the War of Spanish Succession, winning a series of major battles with the French and gaining the country an influence never before attained in Europe. It was during Anne’s reign in 1707 that the United Kingdom of Great Britain was created by the Union of England and Scotland.
2	1714-1727	George I 1660-1727	Nearest Protestant relative of Anne, great-grandson of James I. The 54-year-old George arrived in England from Germany able to speak only a few words of English. George never learned English, so the conduct of national policy was left to the government with Sir Robert Walpole becoming Britain’s first Prime Minister. In 1715, followers of James Stuart, son of James II, attempted to supplant George, but the attempt failed. George spent little time in England – he preferred his beloved Germany.
3	1727-1760	George II 1683-1760	Only son of George I. He was more English than his father, but still relied on Sir Robert Walpole to run the country. George was the last English king to lead his army into battle at Dettingen in 1743. In 1745, there were renewed attempts to restore a Stuart to the throne. Prince Charles Edward Stuart, “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” landed in Scotland. He was routed at Culloden Moor by the army under the Duke of Cumberland. Bonnie Prince Charlie escaped to France and finally died a drunkard’s death in Rome.
4	1760-1820	George III 1738-1820	A grandson of George II and the first English-born and English-speaking monarch since Queen Anne. His reign was one of elegance, and the age of some of the greatest names in English literature – Jane Austen, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Wordsworth. It was also the time of great statesmen like Pitt and Fox and great military men like Wellington and Nelson. In 1773 the “Boston Tea Party” was the first sign of the troubles that were to come in America. The American colonies proclaimed their independence on July 4, 1776. George was well meaning, but suffered from a mental illness due to a metabolic disorder and eventually became blind and insane. His son, George, Prince of Wales, ruled as Prince Regent after 1811 until George’s death.
5	1820-1830	George IV 1762-1830	First son of George III.  Known as the “First Gentleman of Europe.” He had a love of art and architecture, but his private life was a mess. He married twice, once in 1785 to Mrs. Fitzherbert, secretly as she was a Catholic, and then in 1795 to Caroline of Brunswick.  Caroline and George had one daughter, Charlotte in 1796 but she died in 1817. George was considered a great wit, but was also a buffoon and his death was hailed with relief.
6	1830-1837	William IV 1765-1837	Third son of George III.  Known as the “Sailor King” (served in the Royal Navy).  Before his accession he lived with a Mrs. Jordan, an actress, by whom he had ten children.  Married Adelaide of Saxe-Coburg in 1818 to secure the succession. He had two daughters but they did not live. He hated pomp and wanted to dispense with the Coronation. People loved him because of his lack of pretension. During his reign, Britain abolished slavery in the colonies in 1833. The Reform Act was passed in 1832; this extended the vote to the middle-classes on a basis of property qualifications.
7	1837-1901	Victoria 1819-1901	Only child of Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg and Edward Duke of Kent, fourth son of George III.  In 1840, Victoria married her cousin Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Albert exerted tremendous influence over the Queen and until his death was virtual ruler of the country. He was a pillar of respectability and left two legacies: the Christmas Tree and the Great Exhibition of 1851. With the money from the Exhibition, several institutions were developed, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Science Museum, Imperial College, and the Royal Albert Hall. The Queen withdrew from public life after the death of Albert in 1861, until her Golden Jubilee in 1887. Her reign saw the British Empire double in size, and in 1876, the Queen became Empress of India.  When Victoria died in 1901, the British Empire and British world power had reached their highest point. She had nine children, 40 grand-children and 37 great-grandchildren, scattered all over Europe.
8	1901-1910	Edward VII 1841-1910	Eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.  A much-loved king. He loved horse-racing, gambling, and women! This Edwardian Age was one of elegance. Edward had all the social graces and many sporting interests, yachting and horse-racing – his horse Minoru won the Derby in 1909. Edward married the beautiful Alexandra of Denmark in 1863 and they had six children. The eldest, Edward Duke of Clarence, died in 1892 just before he was to marry Princess Mary of Teck. His best-known mistress was Lillie Langtry, the “Jersey Lily.”
9	1910-1936	George V 1865-1936	Second son of Edward VII.  George had not expected to be king, but when his elder brother died, he became the heir-apparent. Joined the Navy as a cadet in 1877 and loved the sea. He was a bluff, hearty man with a “quarter-deck” manner. In 1893 he married Princess Mary of Teck, his dead brother’s fiancée. His years on the throne were difficult: First World War in 1914-1918 and the troubles in Ireland which led to the creation of the Irish Free State. In 1932 he began the royal broadcasts on Christmas Day and in 1935 he celebrated his Silver Jubilee. His later years were overshadowed by his concern about his son the Prince of Wales and his infatuation with Mrs. Simpson.
10	20 Jan,1936-     11 Dec, 1936	Edward VIII 1894-1972	Eldest son of Gorge V.  Most popular Prince of Wales Britain has ever had. Consequently, when he renounced the throne to marry Mrs. Wallis Simpson, the country found it almost impossible to believe. Mrs. Simpson was an American, a divorcee, and had two husbands still living. This was unacceptable to the Church, as Edward had stated that he wanted her to be crowned with him at the Coronation which was to take place the following May. Edward abdicated in favor of his brother, took the title, Duke of Windsor, and went to live abroad.
11	1936-1952	George VI 1895-1952	Second oldest son of George V.  Shy and nervous with a very bad stutter, but he had inherited the steady virtues of his father. He was very popular and well loved by the British people.  His wife Elizabeth and his mother Queen Mary were outstanding in their support of him.  Throughout the Second World War, the King and Queen set an example of courage and fortitude. They remained at Buckingham Palace for the duration of the war in spite of the bombing. The two Princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret, spent the war years at Windsor Castle. George was in close touch with the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill throughout the war. The post-war years of his reign saw great social change and saw the start of the National Health Service.
12	1952-	Elizabeth II 1926-	Oldest daughter of George VI.  Like her parents, Elizabeth was heavily involved in the Second World War, serving in the women’s branch of the British Army, training as a driver and mechanic. She married her cousin Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and they had four children. When her father George VI died, Elizabeth became Queen.  Elizabeth’s coronation in 1953 was the first to be televised, serving to increase popularity of the medium. The huge popularity of the royal wedding in 2011 between the Queen’s grandson, Prince William and the commoner Kate Middleton, now the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, reflected the high profile of the British Monarchy at home and abroad.  On September 9, 2015, Elizabeth became Britain’s longest serving monarch, ruling longer than her great-great grandmother Queen Victoria, who reigned for 63 years and 216 days.

  

Legacy

Today, sixteen nations are members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2.2 billion people. These Commonwealth realms voluntarily continue to share the current British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, as their head of state. These sixteen nations are distinct and equal legal entities - the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomon Islands, and Tuvalu. 

 

The 16 nations making up today's British Commonwealth of Nations.

Britain also retains sovereignty over 14 British Overseas Territories, including the British Antarctic Territory, formed in 1962, based on a claim in 1908.

 

Today's 14 British overseas territories.

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 the English language in regions around the world. Today it is the primary language of up to 460 million people and is spoken by about 1.5 billion as a first, second or foreign language.  Individual and team sports developed in Britain, particularly football (soccer), cricket, lawn tennis, and golf were exported.  British missionaries who travelled around the globe, often in advance of soldiers and civil servants, spread Protestantism (including Anglicanism) to all continents. 

In the 19^th century, innovation in Britain led to revolutionary changes in manufacturing, the development of factory systems, and the growth of transportation by railway and steam ship. British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway stations, and government buildings, can be seen in many cities that were once part of the British Empire.

The Westminster system of parliamentary democracy has served as the template for the governments for many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems.  International commercial contracts are often based on English common law.