British Empire
For a historical list of territories that constituted the British Empire, see Evolution of the British Empire. |
The British Empire in 1897, marked in pink, the traditional colour for Imperial British dominions on maps. |
The
British Empire was the most
extensive empire in world history and for a substantial time was the foremost
global power. It was a product of the European
age of discovery, which began with the global maritime explorations of
Portugal and
Spain 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 (more than 37 million km²), 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 (such as
cricket and
football), 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.
Growth of the overseas empire
The overseas British Empire (in the sense of British oceanic exploration and settlement outside of Europe and the
British Isles) was rooted in the pioneering maritime policies of 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 later British imperial ventures, such as 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 (though the plans to do so were put into motion during his father's reign), 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 (1595-1603). 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.
The Elizabethan era
During the reign of the
Tudor Queen Elizabeth I, Sir
Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe in the years 1577 to 1580, fleeing from the
Spanish, 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 ("New Albion",
Albion being an ancient name for England or Britain), 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 due to 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 (1585 - 1604), 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.
The 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. In 1707, under the
Acts of Union, the
Parliament of England and the
Parliament of Scotland were united in
Westminster, London, as the
Parliament 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. The most famous of these was the disastrous
Darién scheme which attempted to establish a settlement colony and trading post in
Panama to foster trade between Scotland and the
Far East.
After union many
Scots, especially in
Canada,
Jamaica,
India,
Australia and
New Zealand, took up posts as administrators, doctors, lawyers and teachers. 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.
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
Jamaica and
Barbados.
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 (later
New York) 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 (starting with penal colonies from 1788) and
New Zealand (under the crown from 1840) 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,
Colonial history of America |
Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown (John Trumbull, 1797). The loss of the American colonies marked the end of the "first British 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 (1714–62), the Empire became less important and less well-regarded, until an ill-fated attempt (largely involving
taxes, monopolies, and zoning) to reverse the resulting "salutary neglect" (or "benign neglect") provoked the
American War of Independence (1775–83), 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; due largely to the impact of the
Irish Rebellion of 1798 against British rule.
During this period, Britain also outlawed the
slave trade (1807) 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.
[Britain and Latin America, Alan Knight, The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume III]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 the
Indian subcontinent, which would become the British Empire's largest source of revenue, along with the conquest of
Hong Kong,
Singapore,
Ceylon,
Malaya (which was also one of the largest sources of revenue) 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. [
1]
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 Hinduism. Thus, the feuding princes and suzerainties, which arose after the fall of the Mughal Empire made the conditions ripe for British intervention.
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 in/famous
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
Colonial America which was a very influential factor in the minds of many colonials leading up to the
American Revolution. Company "executives" (i.e., leadership, important and influential people within the Company's structure) often amassed large personal fortunes, such
Elihu Yale, for whom
Yale University in
New Haven, CT is named in gratitude for a large contribution made by Yale to the school.
In 1615, Sir
Thomas Roe was instructed by
James I to visit the
Mughal Emperor Jahangir (who ruled over most of the
Indian subcontinent at the time, along with parts of
Afghanistan). The purpose of this mission was to arrange for a commercial treaty which would give the Company exclusive rights to reside and build factories in
Surat and other areas. In return, the Company offered to provide to the emperor goods and rarities from the European market. This mission was highly successful and Jahangir sent a letter to the King through Sir Thomas. The British East India Company found itself completely dominant over the French, Dutch and Portuguese trading companies in the
Indian subcontinent as a result. In 1634, the Mughal emperor
Shah Jahan extended his hospitality to the English traders to the region of
Bengal, which had the world's largest textile industry at the time. In 1717, the Mughal Emperor at the time completely waived customs duties for the trade, giving the Company a decided commercial advantage in the Indian trade. By the 1680's the Company's revenues were large enough that it was able to raise its own army, comprised mainly of indigenous Indian people who were placed under the command of caucasian British officers who were primarily English or Scottish. Such Indian soldiers were called
sepoys.
Expansion
The decline of the
Mughal Empire, which had separated into many smaller states controlled by local rulers who were often in conflict with one another, allowed the Company to expand its territories, which began in 1757, when the Company came into conflict with the
Nawab of
Bengal,
Siraj Ud Daulah. Under the leadership of
Robert Clive, the Company troops and their local allies defeated the Nawab on
23 June 1757 at the
Battle of Plassey, mostly due to the treachery of the Nawab's former army chief
Mir Jafar. This victory, which resulted in the conquest of Bengal, established the British East India Company as both a military and commercial power. This event is widely regarded as the beginning of British rule in India. The wealth gained from the Bengal treasury allowed the Company to strengthen its military might significantly. This army (comprised mostly of Indian soldiers, called
sepoys, and led by British officers) conquered most (virtually all by the mid 19th century) of India's geographic and political regions and thus the Company's territories were substantially augmented.
The Company fought many wars with local Indian rulers during its conquest of India, the most difficult being the four
Anglo-Mysore Wars (between 1766 and 1799) against the
South Indian
Kingdom of Mysore ruled by
Hyder Ali, and later his son
Tipu Sultan (
The Tiger of Mysore) who developed the use of rockets in warfare. Mysore was only defeated in the
Fourth Anglo-Mysore War by the combined forces of Britain and of Mysore's neighbours, for which Hyder Ali and especially Tipu Sultan are remembered in India as legendary rulers. There were a number of other states which the Company could not conquer through military might, mostly in the North, where the Company's presence was ever increasing amidst the internal conflict and dubious offers of protection against one another. Coercive action, threats and diplomacy aided the Company in preventing the local rulers from putting up a united struggle against British rule. By the 1850's the Company ruled over most of the Indian subcontinent and as a result, the Company began to function more as a nation and less as a trading concern.
The Company was also responsible for the illegal
opium trade with
China against the
Qing Emperor's will, which later led to the two
Opium Wars (between 1834 and 1860). As a result of the Company's victory in the
First Opium War, it established
Hong Kong as a British territory. The Company also had a number of wars with other surrounding Asian countries, the most difficult probably being the three
Anglo-Afghan Wars (between 1839 and 1919) against
Afghanistan, which were mostly unsuccessful from the British perspective.
Collapse
The Company's rule effectively came to an end exactly a century after its victory at Plassey. The
Indian Mutiny of 1857 occurred when the Company's Indian
sepoys' rebelled against their British commanders, likely due to political unrest that was triggered by a number of political events. One such event that surely seemed trivial to the Company at the time but turned out to have dire consequences was the Company's introduction of the
Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle. The paper cartridges containing the gunpowder were claimed to be lubricated with animal fat, and had to be bitten open before the powder was poured into the muzzle. Eating cow fat was forbidden for religious reasons for the vast majority of the soldiers, who were Hindus. Even the small minority of Muslims objected becase of the presumed pork-fat content in the cartridges, since their religions forbids eating any pig products at all. Although Company and Enfield representatives insisted that neither cow fat nor pig fat was being used (in fact, no animal fat would have been acceptable to the Hindus), the rumour persisted and many sepoys refused to follow orders involving the use of the weapons that used those particular cartridges. Another factor was the execution of the Indian sepoy
Mangal Pandey who was hanged as a punishment for having attacked and injured some of his British superiors when he learned of the introduction of the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle and the peculiarities of its cartridges and possibly for a number of other reasons unrelated to the 1853 Enfield. While Indians felt a great deal of tension over the decades of British rule, including sentiments of being second class citizens, being exploited, being viewed as incapable of
Home Rule, there had yet to occur any sort of unified uprising against British authority by Indians regardless of sectional differences. In the past, Indians fueded as much with other Indians as they did with erstwhile British rules, which greatly aided the British in their conquest (i.e., The Battle of Plassey was greatly aided by betrayal amongst Indians). In 1857, a number of current events such as the 1853 Enfield animal-fat cartridge issue catalyzed the Mutiny, which eventually brought about the end of the British East India Company's regime in India. Although Indians had achieved a great victory in that they finally shared a common purpose in spite of sectional differences, their immediate situation turned for the worse as they went "from the frying pan to the fire." The Company's failure to demonstrate effective control over its conquered Indian territories (the disaster of the Mutiny in particular had a tremendous influence on the Crown's policy regarding the most effective way to govern India) caused British financial and political entities to become uneasy about the security of their interests in India and what that meant for the future of the Empire, as by 1857 India was a tremendously large part of the Empire's economy and directly responsible for the disproportionately large (relative to the wealth distribution amongst the source of the wealth creation versus the ultimate destination of the wealth, i.e., economic benefit) amount of the British Isles' wealth. As a result, the Crown and the other parts of the British government assumed direct rule over the Indian sub-continent for 90 years following the dissolution of the British East India Company. The period of direct British rule in India is referred to as the
British Raj. The regions now known (in the 21st century) as
India,
Pakistan,
Bangladesh and
Myanmar were collectively known as
British India and were all under the direct rule of the British government and subject to the will of the British Sovereign.
As the first country to industrialise, Britain had been able to draw on most of the accessible world for raw materials and markets. But this situation gradually deteriorated during the 19th century as other powers began to industrialise and sought to use the state to guarantee their markets and sources of supply. By the 1870s, British manufactures in the staple industries of the Industrial Revolution were beginning to experience real competition abroad.
|
Britannia became a symbol of Britain's imperial might |
Industrialisation progressed rapidly in
Germany and the
United States, allowing them to overtake the "old" British and French economies as world leader in some areas. By 1870, the German textile and metal industries had surpassed those of Britain in organisation and technical efficiency and usurped British manufactures in the domestic market. By the turn of the century, the German metals and engineering industries would even be producing for the free trade market of the former "workshop of the world".
While invisible exports (banking, insurance and shipping services) kept Britain "out of the red," her share of world trade fell from a quarter in 1880 to a sixth in 1913. Britain was losing out not only in the markets of newly industrialising countries, but also against third-party competition in less-developed countries. Britain was even losing her former overwhelming dominance in trade with India, China,
Latin America, or the coasts of Africa.
Britain's commercial difficulties deepened with the onset of the "
Long Depression" of 1873–96, a prolonged period of price deflation punctuated by severe business downturns which added to pressure on governments to promote home industry, leading to the widespread abandonment of free trade among Europe's powers (in Germany from 1879 and in France from 1881).
The resulting limitation of both domestic markets and export opportunities led government and business leaders in Europe and later the US to see the solution in sheltered overseas markets united to the home country behind imperial tariff barriers: new overseas subjects would provide export markets free of foreign competition, while supplying cheap raw materials. Although she continued to adhere to free trade until
1932, Britain joined the renewed scramble for formal empire rather than allow areas under her influence to be seized by rivals.
The policy and ideology of European colonial expansion between the 1870s and the outbreak of
World War I in 1914 are often characterised as the "New Imperialism". The period is distinguished by an unprecedented pursuit of what has been termed "empire for empire's sake", aggressive competition for overseas territorial acquisitions and the emergence in colonising countries of doctrines of
racial superiority which denied the fitness of subjugated peoples for self-government.
During this period, Europe's powers added nearly 8,880,000 square miles (23,000,000 km²) to their overseas
colonial possessions. As it was mostly unoccupied by the
Western powers as late as the
1880s,
Africa became the primary target of the "new" imperialist expansion, although conquest took place also in other areas — notably
south-east Asia and the
East Asian seaboard, where
Japan joined the European powers' scramble for territory.
Britain's entry into the new imperial age is often dated to 1875, when the
Conservative government of
Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted
Egyptian ruler
Ismail's shareholding in the
Suez Canal to secure control of this strategic waterway, a channel for shipping between Britain and India since its opening six years earlier under Emperor
Napoleon III. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882.
Fear of
Russia's centuries-old southward expansion was a further factor in British policy: in 1878 Britain took control of
Cyprus as a base for action against a Russian attack on the
Ottoman Empire, after having taken part in the
Crimean War 1854–56 and invading
Afghanistan to forestall an increase in Russian influence there. Britain waged three bloody and unsuccessful wars in Afghanistan, as ferocious popular rebellions, invocations of
jihad and inscrutable terrain frustrated British objectives. The
First Anglo-Afghan War led to one of the most disastrous defeats of the Victorian military when an entire British army was wiped out by Russian-supplied Afghan
Pashtun tribesmen during the 1842 retreat from Kabul. The
Second Anglo-Afghan War led to the British débâcle at
Maiwand in 1880, the siege of Kabul and British withdrawal into India. The
Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919 stoked a tribal uprising against the exhausted British military on the heels of World War I and expelled the British permanently from the new Afghan state. The "
Great Game" in
Inner Asia ended with a bloody British expedition against
Tibet in 1903–04.
At the same time, some powerful industrial lobbies and government leaders in Britain, later exemplified by
Joseph Chamberlain, came to view formal empire as necessary to arrest Britain's relative decline in world markets. During the
1890s Britain adopted the new policy wholeheartedly, quickly emerging as the front-runner in the scramble for tropical African territories.
Britain's adoption of the New Imperialism may be seen as a quest for captive markets or fields for investment of surplus capital, or as a primarily strategic or pre-emptive attempt to protect existing trade links and to prevent the absorption of overseas markets into the increasingly closed imperial trading blocs of rival powers. The failure in the 1900s of Chamberlain's
Tariff Reform campaign for Imperial protection illustrates the strength of free trade feeling even in the face of loss of international market share. Historians have argued that Britain's adoption of the "New imperialism" was an effect of her relative decline in the world, rather than of strength.
British colonial policy
British colonial policy was always driven to a large extent by Britain's trading interests. While settler economies developed the infrastructure to support balanced development, some tropical African territories found themselves developed only as raw-material suppliers. British policies based on comparative advantage left many developing economies dangerously reliant on a single cash crop, which others exported to Britain or to overseas British settlements. A reliance upon the manipulation of conflict between ethnic, religious and racial identities, in order to keep subject populations from uniting against the occupying power â€" the classic "
divide and rule" strategy â€" left a legacy of partition and/or inter-communal difficulties in areas as diverse as Ireland, India, Zimbabwe, Sudan, and Uganda, though in all cases these societies were riven with internal division well before British rule.
Main article: Scramble for Africa.
In 1875 the two most important European holdings in Africa were French controlled
Algeria and Britain's
Cape Colony. By 1914 only
Ethiopia and the republic of
Liberia remained outside formal European control. The transition from an "informal empire" of control through economic dominance to direct control took the form of a "scramble" for territory by the nations of Europe. Britain tried not to play a part in this early scramble, being more of a trading empire rather than a colonial empire; however, it soon became clear it had to gain its own African empire to maintain the balance of power.
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 powers by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims, a formulation which necessitated routine recourse to armed force against indigenous states and peoples.
Britain's 1882 military occupation of
Egypt (itself triggered by concern over the
Suez Canal) contributed to a preoccupation over securing control of the
Nile valley, leading to the conquest of the neighbouring
Sudan in 1896–98 and confrontation with a French military expedition at
Fashoda (September 1898).
In 1899 Britain completed its takeover of what is today
South Africa. This had begun with the annexation of the
Cape in 1795 and continued with the conquest of the
Boer Republics in the late 19th century, following the
Second Boer War.
Cecil Rhodes was the pioneer of British expansion north into Africa with his privately owned
British South Africa Company. Rhodes expanded into the land north of South Africa and established
Rhodesia. Rhodes' dream of a railway connecting
Cape Town to
Alexandria passing through a British Africa covering the continent is what led to his company's pressure on the government for further expansion into Africa.
British gains in southern and
East Africa prompted Rhodes and
Alfred Milner, Britain's High Commissioner in South Africa, to urge a "Cape-to-
Cairo" empire linking by rail the strategically important Canal to the mineral-rich South, though German occupation of
Tanganyika prevented its realisation until the end of
World War I. In 1903, the
All Red Line telegraph system communicated with the major parts of the Empire.
Paradoxically, Britain, the staunch advocate of free trade, emerged in 1914 with not only the largest overseas empire thanks to her long-standing presence in India, but also the greatest gains in the "scramble for Africa", reflecting her advantageous position at its inception. Between 1885 and 1914 Britain took nearly 30% of Africa's population under her control, compared to 15% for France, 9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and 1% for
Italy:
Nigeria alone contributed 15 million subjects, more than in the whole of
French West Africa or the entire German colonial empire.
Britain's empire had already begun its transformation into the modern
Commonwealth with the extension of
Dominion status to the already
self-governing colonies of
Canada (1867),
Australia (1901),
New Zealand (1907),
Newfoundland (1907), and the newly-created
Union of South Africa (1910). Leaders of the new states joined with British statesmen in periodic Colonial (from 1907, Imperial)
Conferences, the first of which was held in
London in 1887.
The foreign relations of the Dominions were still conducted through the Foreign Office of the
United Kingdom: Canada created a Department of External Affairs in 1909, but diplomatic relations with other governments continued to be channelled through the Governors-General, Dominion High Commissioners in
London (first appointed by Canada in 1880 and by Australia in 1910) and British legations abroad. Britain's declaration of war in
World War I applied to all the Dominions.
But the Dominions did enjoy a substantial freedom in their adoption of foreign policy where this did not explicitly conflict with British interests: Canada's
Liberal government negotiated a bilateral free-trade
Reciprocity Agreement with the United States in 1911, but went down to defeat by the
Conservative opposition.
In defence, the Dominions' original treatment as part of a single imperial military and naval structure proved unsustainable as Britain faced new commitments in Europe and the challenge of an emerging
German High Seas Fleet after 1900. In 1909 it was decided that the Dominions should have their own navies, reversing an 1887 agreement that the then Australasian colonies should contribute to the
Royal Navy in return for the permanent stationing of a squadron in the region.
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British Empire memorial for the First World War in the Brussels cathedral. |
The aftermath of
World War I saw the last major extension of British rule, with Britain gaining control through
League of Nations Mandates in
Palestine and
Iraq after the collapse of the
Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, as well as in the former German colonies of
Tanganyika, South-West Africa (now
Namibia) and
New Guinea (the last two actually under South African and Australian rule respectively). The British zones of occupation in the German
Rhineland after World War I and West Germany after World War II were not considered part of the Empire.
But although Britain emerged among the war's victors, and her rule expanded into new areas, the heavy costs of the war undermined her capacity to maintain the vast empire. The British had suffered millions of casualties and liquidated assets at an alarming rate, which led to debt accumulation, upending of capital markets and manpower deficiencies in the staffing of far-flung imperial posts in Asia and the African colonies. Nationalist sentiment grew in both old and new Imperial territories, fuelled by pride at Empire troops' participation in the war and the grievance felt by many non-white ex-servicemen at the
racial discrimination they had encountered during their service to the Empire.
The 1920s saw a rapid transformation of Dominion status. Although the Dominions had had no formal voice in declaring war in 1914, each was included separately among the signatories of the 1919 peace
Treaty of Versailles, which had been negotiated by a British-led united Empire delegation. In 1922 Dominion reluctance to support British military action against
Turkey influenced Britain's decision to seek a compromise settlement.
Full Dominion independence was formalised in the 1926
Balfour Declaration and the 1931
Statute of Westminster: each Dominion was henceforth to be equal in status to Britain herself, free of British legislative interference and autonomous in international relations. The Dominions section created within the Colonial Office in
1907 was upgraded in 1925 to a separate Dominions Office and given its own Secretary of State in
1930.
|
Map showing British Empire in 1921 coloured pink. |
Canada led the way, becoming the first Dominion to conclude an international treaty entirely independently (1923) and obtaining the appointment (1928) of a British High Commissioner in
Ottawa, thereby separating the administrative and diplomatic functions of the Governor-General and ending the latter's anomalous role as the representative of the head of state and of the British Government. Canada's first permanent diplomatic mission to a foreign country opened in
Washington, DC in 1927: Australia followed in
1940.
Egypt, formally independent from
1922 but bound to Britain by treaty until 1936 (and under partial occupation until 1956) similarly severed all constitutional links with Britain.
Iraq, which became a British Protectorate in 1922, also gained complete independence ten years later in 1932.
The end of British rule in Ireland
Despite
Irish home rule (but
not Irish constitutional independence) being guaranteed under the
Third Irish Home Rule Act in 1914, the onset of World War I delayed its implementation. On Easter Monday 1916 an initially unsuccessful armed uprising was staged in Dublin by a mixed group of nationalists, including
Michael Collins. After his release from prison in 1919, Collins led Irish
guerrillas, known as the
Irish Republican Army in a military campaign against British rule. The ensuing
Anglo-Irish War ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the
Anglo-Irish Treaty. The treaty divided Ireland into two states, most of the island (26 counties) became the
Irish Free State, an independent dominion nation within the
British Commonwealth, while the six counties in the north with a largely loyalist, Protestant community remained a part of the
United Kingdom as
Northern Ireland.
In
1949 Ireland became a
republic, fully independent from the
United Kingdom, and withdrew from the Commonwealth. Ireland's
Constitution claimed the six counties of
Northern Ireland as a part of the
Republic of Ireland until 1998. The issue over whether Northern Ireland should remain in the United Kingdom or join the Republic of Ireland has divided Northern Ireland's people and led to a long and bloody conflict known as
the Troubles.
However the
Good Friday Agreement of 1998 brought about a ceasefire between most of the major organisations on both sides, creating hope for a peaceful resolution.
The rise of anti-colonial
nationalist movements in the subject territories and the changing economic situation of the world in the first half of the 20th century challenged an imperial power now increasingly preoccupied with issues nearer home. The Empire's end began with the onset of the Second World War, when a deal was reached between the British government and the
Indian independence movement, whereby the Indians would co-operate and remain loyal during the war, after which they would be granted independence. Following India's lead, nearly all of Britain's other colonies would become independent over the next two decades.
The end of Empire gathered pace after Britain's efforts during
World War II left the country all but exhausted and found its former allies disinclined to support the colonial
status quo. Economic crisis in 1947 made many realise that the
Labour government of
Clement Attlee should abandon Britain's attempt to retain all of its overseas territories. The Empire was increasingly regarded as an unnecessary drain on public finances by politicians and civil servants, if not the general public.
Britain's declaration of hostilities against Germany in September 1939 did not automatically commit the Dominions. All the Dominions except Australia and Ireland issued their own declarations of war. The Irish Free State had negotiated the removal of the
Royal Navy from the
Treaty Ports the year before, and chose to remain
legally neutral throughout
the war. Australia went to war under the British declaration.
World War II fatally undermined Britain's already weakened commercial and financial leadership and heightened the importance of the Dominions and the
United States as a source of military assistance. Australian prime minister
John Curtin's unprecedented action (1942) in successfully demanding the recall for home service of Australian troops earmarked for the defence of British-held
Burma demonstrated that Dominion governments could no longer be expected to subordinate their own national interests to British strategic perspectives. Curtin had written in a national newspaper the year before that Australia should look to the United States for protection rather than Britain .
After the war, Australia and New Zealand joined with the United States in the
ANZUS regional security treaty in 1951 (although the US repudiated its commitments to New Zealand following a 1985 dispute over port access for nuclear vessels). Britain's pursuit (from 1961) and attainment (1973) of
European Community membership weakened the old commercial ties to the Dominions, ending their privileged access to the UK market.
In the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, post-war decolonisation was accomplished with almost unseemly haste in the face of increasingly powerful (and sometimes mutually conflicting) nationalist movements, with Britain rarely fighting to retain any territory. Britain's limitations were exposed to a humiliating degree by the
Suez Crisis of 1956 in which the
United States opposed British,
French and
Israeli intervention in Egypt, seeing it as a doomed adventure likely to jeopardise American interests in the
Middle East.
The independence of
India in
1947 ended a 40-year struggle by the
Indian National Congress, first for self-government and later for full sovereignty, though the land's partition into India and
Pakistan entailed violence costing hundreds of thousands of lives. The acceptance by Britain, and the other Dominions, of India's adoption of republican status (1950) is now taken as the start of the modern Commonwealth. Owing to this declaration, 31
Commonwealth Republics are now members of the Commonwealth.
Singapore became independent in two stages. The British did not believe that Singapore would be large enough to defend itself against others alone. Therefore, Singapore was joined with
Malaya,
Sarawak and
North Borneo to form
Malaysia upon independence from the Empire. This short-lived union was dissolved in 1965 when Singapore left
Malaysia and achieved complete independence.
Burma achieved independence (1948) outside the Commonwealth; Burma being the first colony to sever all ties with the British;
Ceylon (1948) and
Malaya (1957) within it. Britain's
Palestine Mandate ended (1948) in withdrawal and open warfare between the territory's
Jewish and
Arab populations. In the Mediterranean, a guerrilla war waged by
Greek Cypriot advocates of
union with
Greece ended (1960) in an independent
Cyprus, although Britain did retain two military bases -
Akrotiri and Dhekelia.
 |
The reign of Queen Elizabeth II, the current Queen, has seen the gradual dismantling of the Empire |
The end of Britain's Empire in Africa came with exceptional rapidity, often leaving the newly-independent states ill-equipped to deal with the challenges of sovereignty:
Ghana's independence (1957) after a ten-year nationalist political campaign was followed by that of
Nigeria and
Somaliland (1960),
Sierra Leone and
Tanganyika (1961),
Uganda (1962),
Kenya and
Zanzibar (1963),
The Gambia (1965),
Botswana (formerly Bechuanaland) and
Lesotho (formerly Basutoland) (1966) and
Swaziland (1968).
British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was complicated by the region's white settler populations: Kenya had already provided an example in the
Mau Mau Uprising of violent conflict exacerbated by white landownership and reluctance to concede majority rule. White minority rule in
South Africa remained a source of bitterness within the Commonwealth until the Union of South Africa left the Commonwealth in 1961.
Although the white-dominated
Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland ended in the independence of
Malawi (formerly
Nyasaland) and
Zambia (the former Northern Rhodesia) in 1964, Southern Rhodesia's white minority (a
self-governing colony since 1923) declared independence with their
UDI rather than submit to equality with
black Africans. The support of South Africa's apartheid government kept the Rhodesian regime in place until 1979, when agreement was reached on majority rule in an independent
Zimbabwe.
Most of Britain's Caribbean territories opted for eventual separate independence after the failure of the
West Indies Federation (1958–62):
Jamaica and
Trinidad and Tobago (1962) were followed into statehood by
Barbados (1966) and the smaller islands of the eastern Caribbean (1970s and 1980s). Britain's Pacific dependencies such as the
Gilbert Islands (which had seen the last attempt at human colonisation within the Empire - the
Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme) underwent a similar process of decolonisation in the latter decades.
As decolonisation and the
Cold War were gathering momentum during the 1950s, an uninhabited rock in the Atlantic Ocean,
Rockall, became the last territorial acquisition of the United Kingdom. Concerns that the
Soviet Union might use the island to spy on a British missile test [
2] prompted the
Royal Navy to land a party and officially claim the rock in the name of the Queen in 1955. In 1972 the
Isle of Rockall Act formally incorporated the island into the United Kingdom.
In
1982, Britain's resolve to defend her remaining overseas territories was put to the test when
Argentina invaded the
Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire. Britain's ultimately successful military response to liberate the islands during the ensuing
Falklands War prompted headlines in the US press that "the Empire strikes back", and was viewed by many to have contributed to reversing the downward trend in the UK's status as a
world power.
[ Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (Abacus, 1994), p629]In
1997, Britain's last major overseas territory,
Hong Kong, became a
Special Administrative Region of the
People's Republic of China under the terms of the
Sino-British Joint Declaration agreed some thirteen years previously. The fourteen remaining
British overseas territories, the
Commonwealth of Nations and the enduring
personal unions with the
Commonwealth Realms constitute a legacy of the British Empire.
Overviews
* Bryant, Arthur.
The History of Britain and the British Peoples, 3 vols. (London, 1984â€"90).
* Ferguson, Niall.
Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2002),
* Hyam, Ronald.
Britain's Imperial Century, 1815-1914: A Study of Empire and Expansion (Macmillan, 1993).
* James, Lawrence.
The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (St. Martin's Griffin, 1997).
* Judd, Denis.
Empire: The British Imperial Experience, From 1765 to the Present (London, 1996).
* Lloyd; T. O.
The British Empire, 1558-1995 Oxford University Press, 1996
* Louis, William. Roger (general editor),
The Oxford History of the British Empire, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1998â€"99).
* Marshall, P. J. (ed.),
The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1996).
* Olson, James S. and Robert S. Shadle;
Historical Dictionary of the British Empire 1996
* Rose, J. Holland, A. P. Newton and E. A. Benians (gen. eds.),
The Cambridge History of the British Empire, 9 vols. (Cambridge, 1929â€"61).
* Simon C. Smith.
British Imperialism 1750-1970 Cambridge University Press, 1998. brief
Popular
* Ritchie, Harry;
The Last Pink Bits: Travels Through the Remnants of the British Empire Sceptre Press, 1997
Specialized scholarly studies
* Andrews, Kenneth R., Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480â€"1630 (Cambridge, 1984).
* David Armitage;
The Ideological Origins of the British Empire Cambridge University Press, 2000.
* Armitage, David, 'Greater Britain: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?' American Historical Review, 104 (1999), 427â€"45.
* Armitage, David (ed.), Theories of Empire, 1450â€"1800 (Aldershot, 1998).
* Charles A. Barone, Marxist Thought on Imperialism: Survey and Critique (London: Macmillan, 1985)
* Bernard Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan (eds.),
Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (Chapel Hill, 1991)
* Barker, Sir Ernest, The Ideas and Ideals of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1941).
* W. Baumgart,
Imperialism: The Idea and Reality of British and French Colonial Expansion, 1880-1914 (Oxford University Press, 1982)
* C. A. Bayly,
Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World, 1780-1831 (Longman, 1989).
* Bennett, George (ed.),
The Concept of Empire: Burke to Attlee, 1774â€"1947 (London, 1953).
* J. M. Blaut, The Colonizers' Model of the World, London 1993
* Elleke Boehmer; ed.
Empire Writing: An Anthology of Colonial Literature, 1870-1918 Oxford University Press, 1998
*
Patrick Brantlinger,
Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914 (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988).
* Chris Brooks and Peter Faulkner (eds.),
The White Man's Burdens: An Anthology of British Poetry of the Empire (Exeter UP, 1996).
* Constantine, Stephen. "British Emigration to the Empire-commonwealth since 1880: from Overseas Settlement to Diaspora?"
Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History [Great Britain] 2003 31(2): 16-35. Issn: 0308-6534
* Philip Darby,
The Three Faces of Imperialism: British and American Approaches to Asia and Africa, 1870-1970 (Yale University Press, 1987
* Michael W. Doyle,
Empires (Cornell UP, 1986).
* Elliott, J.H.,
Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006).
* Gould, Eliga H.,
The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
* Harlow, V. T.,
The Founding of the Second British Empire, 1763â€"1793, 2 vols. (London, 1952â€"64).
* Heinlein, Frank.
British Government Policy and Decolonisation, 1945-1963: Scrutinising the Officiial Mind Routledge, 2002.
* Hyam, Ronald.
Empire and Sexuality: The British Experience (Manchester UP, 1990).
* Edward Ingram.
The British Empire as a World Power (2001)
* Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (Abacus, 1994).
* Robert Johnson.
British Imperialism Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. historiography
* Kennedy, Paul,
The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London, 1976).
* Kenny, Kevin, ed.
Ireland and the British Empire Oxford U. Press 2004.
* Knorr, Klaus E.,
British Colonial Theories 1570â€"1850 Toronto, 1944).
* Levine, Philippa, ed.
Gender and Empire Oxford U. Press, 2004.
* McDevitt, Patrick F.
May the Best Man Win: Sport, Masculinity, and Nationalism in Great Britain and the Empire, 1880-1935 Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
* Mehta, Uday Singh,
Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago, 1999).
* Morgan, Philip D. and Hawkins, Sean, ed.
Black Experience and the Empire Oxford U. Press, 2004.
*
Jan Morris,
The Spectacle of Empire: Style, Effect and Pax Britannica (Faber, 1982).
*
Pocock, J. G. A., 'The Limits and Divisions of British History: In Search of the Unknown Subject',
American Historical Review, 87 (1982), 311â€"36.
* Porter, Andrew.
Religion Versus Empire?: British Protestant Missionaries and Overseas Expansion, 1700-1914 Manchester U. Press 2004
* Potter, Simon J.
News and the British World: The Emergence of an Imperial Press System. Clarendon, 2003
* Rüger, Jan. "Nation, Empire and Navy: Identity Politics in the United Kingdom 1887-1914"
Past & Present 2004 (185): 159-187. Issn: 0031-2746
* Spurr, David.
The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing and Imperial Administration (Duke UP, 1993).
* Joanna Trollope,
Britannia's Daughters: Women of the British Empire (Hutchinson, 1983).
* Wilson, Kathleen, ed.
A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660-1840 Cambridge U. Press 2004.
*
Tudor re-conquest of Ireland*
British colonisation of the Americas*
British East India Company*
British Empire and Commonwealth Museum*
Commonwealth of Nations*
Commonwealth Realm*
Decolonisation*
Empire Day*
Evolution of the British Empire*
History of the United Kingdom*
Imperialism in Asia*
List of United Kingdom topics* "
The White Man's Burden"
*
Size of Empires*
Government Houses of the British Empire*
British Personal Unions*
Extensive information on the British Empire*
Sizes of various empires and quasi-empires*
The Commonwealth - UK government site
