WikiPortallus: British Empire.html

For a comprehensive list of the territories that formed the British Empire, see Evolution of the British Empire.

The British Empire was the set of dominions, colonies, protectorates and mandates ruled or administered by the United Kingdom (UK), that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the 17th century. It was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1922, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, approximately one-quarter of the world's population¹ and covered more than 14 million square miles, a quarter of Earth's total land area.² As a result, its political, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was often said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous territories.

During the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Spain and Portugal pioneered European exploration of the globe and in the process established overseas empires that stretched from the Americas to the Philippines. Envious of the great wealth these empires bestowed on Spain and Portugal, the Northern European nations of England, France and the Netherlands began in the late 16th century to challenge Spanish and Portuguese hegemony. The English, French and Dutch established colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia, in conflict with one another and with Spain and Portugal, which had begun a slow decline as imperial powers during the 17th century. A series of wars with the Netherlands and France left England (following the 1707 Act of Union, Britain) the dominant colonial power in North America and India. The loss of America in 1783 after a war of independence was a temporary blow to Britain, depriving it of its most powerful and populous colony. British attention soon turned towards Africa and Asia, where a new empire was established. Following the defeat of Napoleonic France in 1815, Britain enjoyed a century of effectively unchallenged dominance, thanks to its rapidly expanding economy and the strength of the Royal Navy. During the 19th century, Britain consolidated and expanded its imperial holdings in Africa, Asia, India and the Pacific, and granted increasing degrees of autonomy to its white settler colonies, which were reclassified as dominions.

The growth of Germany and the United States had eroded Britain's economic lead by the end of the 19th century. Subsequent military and economic tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of World War I which ended the period of relative peace in 1914. The conflict, for which Britain leaned heavily upon its empire, placed enormous financial strain on Britain, and although the empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after the war, it was no longer a peerless industrial or military power. Despite Britain and its empire emerging as victors, World War II saw parts of the British Empire in Asia occupied by Japan which damaged British prestige and accelerated the decline of the empire. Within two years of the end of the war, Britain granted independence to its most populous and valuable colony, India.

During the remainder of the 20th century, most of the territories of the empire became independent as part of a larger global decolonization movement by the European powers, ending with the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997. After independence, many British colonies joined the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states. Some have retained the British monarch, currently Elizabeth II, as their head of state to become independent Commonwealth realms. Fourteen territories remain under British sovereignty, the British Overseas Territories.

Origins (1497–1583)

A replica of The Matthew, John Cabot's ship used for his second voyage to the New World. Cabot and his ship were never seen again.

The foundations of the British Empire were laid at a time before the creation of Great Britain, when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496 King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Portugal and Spain in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead a voyage to discover a route to Asia via the North Atlantic.³ Cabot sailed in 1497, and though he successfully made landfall on the coast of Canada (mistakenly believing, like Christopher Columbus five years earlier, that he had reached Asia⁴), there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but nothing was heard from his ships again.⁵

No further attempts to establish English colonies overseas were made until well into the reign of Elizabeth I, during the last decades of the 16th century.⁶ The Protestant Reformation had made enemies of England and Roman Catholic Spain.⁷ In the Anglo-Spanish Wars, the English Crown sanctioned privateers such as Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake to engage in piratical attacks on Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic, laden with treasure from the New World.⁸ At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was the first to use the term "British Empire"⁹) were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own empire, to rival those of Spain and Portugal. By this time, Spain was firmly entrenched in the Americas, Portugal had established a string of trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River, later to become New France.

Plantations of Ireland

Though a relative latecomer to overseas colonisation in comparison to Spain and Portugal, England had been engaged in a form of 'domestic colonisation'¹⁰ in Ireland. The 16th century Plantations of Ireland, run by English colonists, were a precursor to the overseas Empire,¹¹ and several people involved in these projects also had a hand in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the "West Country men", which included Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Richard Grenville and Sir Ralph Lane.¹²

"First British Empire" (1583–1783)

Plaque in St. John's, Newfoundland, commemorating Gilbert's founding of the British overseas Empire

In 1578 Queen Elizabeth I granted a patent to Sir Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration. That year, Gilbert sailed for the West Indies with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but bad weather caused the expedition to fail at the outset. In 1583 he embarked on a second attempt, on this occasion to the island of Newfoundland whose harbour he formally claimed for England, though no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England, and was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584, in the same year founding the colony of Roanoke on the coast of present-day North Carolina. Lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.¹³

In 1603, King James VI of Scotland ascended to the English throne and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations' colonial infrastructure to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies.¹⁴ Although its beginnings were hit-and-miss, the British Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of a private company, the English East India Company, to trade with Asia. This period, until the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after the United States Declaration of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has subsequently been referred to as the "First British Empire".¹⁵

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

The Americas, Africa and the Slave Trade

The Caribbean initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies,¹⁶ but not before several attempts at colonisation failed. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years, and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits.¹⁷ Colonies in St Lucia (1605) and Grenada (1609) also rapidly folded, but settlements were successfully established in St. Kitts (1624), Barbados (1627) and Nevis (1628).¹⁸ The colonies soon adopted the system of sugar plantations successfully used by the Portuguese in Brazil, which depended on slave labour, and—at first—Dutch ships, to sell the slaves and buy the sugar. To ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of this trade remained in English hands, Parliament decreed in 1651 that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies. This led to hostilities with the United Dutch Provinces—a series of Anglo-Dutch Wars—which would eventually strengthen England's position in the Americas at the expense of the Dutch. In 1655 England annexed the island of Jamaica from the Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonising the Bahamas.

England's first permanent overseas settlement was founded in 1607 in Jamestown, led by Captain John Smith and managed by the Virginia Company, an offshoot of which established a colony on Bermuda, which had been discovered in 1609. The Company's charter was revoked in 1624 and direct control was assumed by the crown, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia. The Newfoundland Company was created in 1610 with the aim of creating a permanent settlement on Newfoundland, but was largely unsuccessful. In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven for puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims. Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive of many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland was founded as a haven for Roman Catholics (1634), Rhode Island (1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions and Connecticut (1639) for congregationalists. The Province of Carolina was founded in 1663. In 1664, England gained control of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (renamed New York) via negotiations following the Second Anglo-Dutch War, in exchange for Suriname. In 1681, the colony of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn. The American colonies, which provided tobacco, cotton, and rice in the south and naval materiel were less financially successful than those of the Caribbean, but had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far larger numbers of English emigrants who preferred their temperate climates.¹⁹

In 1670, King Charles II granted a charter to the Hudson's Bay Company, granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in what was then known as Rupert's Land, a vast stretch of territory that would later make up a large proportion of Canada. Forts and trading posts established by the Company were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony next door in New France.²⁰

The Treaty of Paris, by Benjamin West (1783) depicting (from left to right) John Jay, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Henry Laurens, and William Temple Franklin. The British commissioners refused to pose, so the painting was never finished.

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.²¹ From the outset, slavery was the basis of the British Empire in the West Indies. Until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic.²² To facilitate this trade, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population comprising blacks rose from 25% in 1650 to around 80% in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10% to 40% over the same period (the majority in the south).²³ For the slave traders, the trade was extremely profitable, and became a major economic mainstay for such western British cities as Bristol and Liverpool, which formed the third corner of the so-called triangular trade with Africa and the Americas. For the transportees, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average mortality rate during the middle passage was one in seven.²⁴

In 1695 the Scottish parliament granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which proceeded in 1698 to establish a settlement on the isthmus of Panama, with a view to building a canal there. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and afflicted by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland - a quarter of Scottish capital was lost in the enterprise²⁵ - and ended Scottish hopes of establishing its own overseas empire. The episode also had major political consequences, persuading both England and Scotland of the merits of a union of countries, rather than just crowns.²⁶ This was achieved in 1707 with the Treaty of Union, establishing the United Kingdom of Great Britain.

Asia

At the end of the 16th century, England and the Netherlands began to challenge Portugal's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages—the English (later British) and Dutch East India Companies, chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. The primary aim of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, and they focused their efforts on the source, the Indonesian archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India. The close proximity of London and Amsterdam across the North Sea and intense rivalry between England and the Netherlands inevitably led to conflict between the two companies, with the Dutch gaining the upper hand in the Moluccas (previously a Portuguese stronghold) after the withdrawal of the English in 1622, and the English enjoying more success in India, at Surat, after the establishment of a factory in 1613. Though England would ultimately eclipse the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands's more advanced financial system²⁷ and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left it with a stronger position in Asia. Hostilities ceased after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Dutch William of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Netherlands and England. A deal between the two nations left the spice trade of the Indonesian archipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability, and by 1720, in terms of sales, the English company had overtaken the Dutch.²⁸ The English East India Company shifted its focus from Surat—a hub of the spice trade network—to Fort St George (later to become Madras), Bombay (ceded by the Portuguese to Charles II of England in 1661 as dowry for Catherine de Braganza) and Sutanuti (which would merge with two other villages to form Calcutta).

Global struggles with France

Peace between England and the Netherlands in 1688 meant that the two countries entered the Nine Years' War as allies, but the conflict—waged in Europe and overseas between France, Spain and the Anglo-Dutch alliance—left the English a stronger colonial power than the Dutch, who were forced to devote a larger proportion of their military budget on the costly land war in Europe.²⁹ The 18th century would see England (after 1707, Britain) rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, and France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage.³⁰

The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philippe of Anjou, a grandson of the King of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for Britain and the other powers of Europe.³¹ In 1701, Britain, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession. The conflict, which France and Spain were to lose, lasted until 1714. At the concluding peace Treaty of Utrecht, Philip renounced his and his descendants' right to the French throne. Spain lost its empire in Europe, and though it kept its empire in the Americas and the Philippines, it was no longer a significant European power.³² The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain, Gibraltar and Minorca. Gibraltar, which is still a British overseas territory to this day, became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean. Minorca was returned to Spain at the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, after changing hands twice. Spain also ceded the rights to the lucrative asiento (permission to sell slaves in Spanish America) to Britain.³³

The Seven Years' War, which began in 1756, was the first war waged on a global scale, fought in Europe, India, North America, the Caribbean, the Philippines and coastal Africa. The signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763) had important consequences for Britain and its empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power there was effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert's Land³⁴, the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. In India, the Carnatic War had left France still in control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, effectively leaving the future of India to Britain. The British victory over France in the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's dominant colonial power.³⁵

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

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

Company rule in India

During its first century of operation, the British East India Company focused on trade, rather than empire building, with the Company no match for the powerful Mughal Empire,³⁶ which had granted the Company trading rights in 1617. Company interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the Mughal Empire declined in power and the British East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the La Compagnie française des Indes orientales, during the Carnatic Wars in southeastern India in the 1740s and 1750s. The Battle of Plassey, which saw the British, led by Robert Clive, defeat the French and their Indian allies, left the Company in control of Bengal and as the major military and political power in India.³⁷ In the following decades it gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or ruling via local puppet rulers under the threat of force of the Indian Army, the vast majority of which was composed of native Indian sepoys.³⁸ The Company's conquest of India was complete by 1857.

Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown (John Trumbull, 1797). The loss of the American colonies marked the end of the "first British Empire"

Loss of the Thirteen Colonies in America

The loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by historians as the event defining the transition between the "first" and "second" empires,⁴⁰ in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783⁴¹, especially following the Jay Treaty⁴², confirmed Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success. Tensions escalated during the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France, and boarded American ships to impress into the Royal Navy men of British birth. The U.S. declared war, the War of 1812, in which both sides tried to make major gains at the other's expense. Both failed and the peace treaty ratified in 1815 kept the prewar boundaries.⁴³

Events in America influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000⁴⁴ defeated Loyalists had migrated from America following independence. The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John River in Nova Scotia felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784.⁴⁵ 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.⁴⁶

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

The Pacific

Since 1718, transportation to the American colonies had been a penalty for various criminal offences in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year across the Atlantic.⁴⁷ Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government turned to the newly discovered lands of Australia.⁴⁸ The western coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by a Dutch explorer in 1606 and was later named by the Dutch East India Company New Holland⁴⁹, but there was no attempt to colonize it. In 1770 James Cook discovered the eastern coast of Australia while on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific Ocean, claimed the continent for Britain, and named it New South Wales.⁵⁰ In 1778 Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788.⁵¹ Britain continued to transport convicts to Australia until 1840, at which time the colony's population numbered 56,000, the majority of whom were convicts, ex-convicts, or their descendents.⁵² The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold.⁵³

During his voyage, Cook also visited New Zealand, first discovered by Dutch sailors in 1642, and claimed the North and South islands for the British crown in 1769 and 1770 respectively. Initially, interaction between the native Maori population and Europeans was limited to the trading of goods, but increased European settlement by missionaries and traders during the early 1800s led Britain to seek formal control and in 1840, the Treaty of Waitangi was signed with the Maori.⁵⁴ This treaty is considered by many to be New Zealand's founding document⁵⁵, but differing interpretations of the Maori and English versions of the text⁵⁶ have meant that it continues to be a source of dispute.

The Battle of Waterloo marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the beginning of the Pax Britannica

War with Napoleonic France

Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations.⁵⁷ It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was threatened: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe. The Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones in which Britain invested large amounts of capital and resources to win. French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy, which won a decisive victory over the French fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. Overseas colonies were attacked and occupied, including those of the Netherlands, which was annexed by Napoleon in 1810. France was finally defeated by a coalition of European armies in 1815. Britain and its empire were again the beneficiaries of peace treaties: France ceded the Ionian Islands and Malta (which it had occupied in 1797 and 1798 respectively), St Lucia and Mauritius; Spain ceded Trinidad and Tobago; the Netherlands Guyana and the Cape Colony. Britain returned Guadeloupe and Réunion to France, and Java and Suriname to the Netherlands.

Abolition of slavery

Under increasing pressure from the abolitionist movement, Britain outlawed the slave trade (1807) and soon began enforcing this principle on other nations. In 1808, Sierra Leone was designated an official British colony for freed slaves.⁵⁸ By the mid-19th century Britain had largely eradicated the world slave trade. The Slavery Abolition Act passed in 1833 made not just the slave trade but slavery itself illegal, emancipating all slaves in the British Empire on 1 August 1834.⁵⁹

The imperial century (1815–1914)

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

Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial century" by some historians,⁶⁰⁶¹ around 10 million square miles of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire.⁶² Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in central Asia⁶³ and, unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the Pax Britannica.⁶⁴ Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many nominally independent countries, such as in the Caribbean, Latin America, China and Siam, which has been characterised by some historians as an "informal empire" ⁶⁵

The steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, underpinned British imperial strength, allowing it to control and defend the sprawling empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, the so-called All Red Line.⁶⁶

India, Southeast Asia, and China

British policy in Asia during the 19th century centered around protecting and expanding India, which was viewed as its most important colony and the key to the rest of Asia.⁶⁷ The East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia. The Company's Army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to cooperate in arenas outside of India: the eviction of Napoleon from Egypt (1799), the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824) and the defeat of Burma (1826).⁶⁸

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

The end of the Company was precipitated by a mutiny of sepoys against their British commanders over the rumoured introduction of rifle cartridges lubricated with animal fat. Use of the cartridges, which required biting open before use, would have been in violation of the religious beliefs of Hindus and Muslims, but the Indian Rebellion of 1857 had causes that went beyond the introduction of bullets: at stake was Indian culture and religion, in the face of the steady encroachment of that by the British. The rebellion was suppressed by the British, but not before heavy loss of life on both sides. The mutiny is also an early example of the growing use of communications technology with the electronic telegraph critical in halting the early spread of rebellion.⁶⁹ As a result of the war, the British government assumed direct control over India, ushering in the period known as the British Raj, where an appointed Governor General administered India and Queen Victoria crowned the Empress of India. The East India Company was dissolved the following year, in 1858.

India suffered a series of serious crop failures during the latter stage of the 19th century, leading to widespread famines in which at least 10 million people died. The East India Company had failed to implement any co-ordinated policy to deal with the famines during its period of rule. This changed during the Raj, in which commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect.⁷⁰

From its base in India, the Company had also been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by the Qing dynasty in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China. In 1839, the seizure by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War, and the seizure by Britain of the island of Hong Kong (then a minor outpost) as a base.⁷¹

Rivalry with Russia

During the 19th century, Britain and Russia vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the declining Ottoman, Persian and Chinese Manchu empires.⁷² This rivalry in Eurasia came to be known as the "Great Game".⁷³ As far as Britain was concerned, the defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkey in the Russo-Persian War (1826-1828) and Russo-Turkish War (1828–1829) demonstrated its imperial ambitions and capabilities, and stoked fears in Britain of an overland invasion of India.⁷⁴ In 1839, Britain moved to preempt this by invading Afghanistan, but the First Anglo-Afghan War was a disaster for Britain.⁷⁵ When Russia invaded the Turkish Balkans in 1853, fears of Russian dominance in the Mediterranean and Middle East led Britain and France to invade the Crimean Peninsula in order to destroy Russian naval capabilities.⁷⁶ The ensuing Crimean War (1854-56), which involved new techniques of modern warfare,⁷⁷ and was the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial power during the Pax Britannica, was a resounding defeat for Russia.⁷⁸ The situation remained unresolved in Central Asia for two more decades, with Britain annexing Baluchistan in 1876 and Russia Kirghizia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. For a while it appeared that another war would be inevitable, but the two countries reached an agreement on their respective spheres of influence in the region in 1878, and on all outstanding matters in 1907 with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente.⁷⁹

Cape to Cairo

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

The Dutch East India Company had founded the Cape Colony on the southern tip of Africa in 1652 as a way station for its ships travelling to and from its colonies in the East Indies. Britain formally acquired the colony, and its large Afrikaner (or Boer) population in 1806, having occupied it in 1795 in order to prevent it falling into French hands, following the invasion of the Netherlands by France.⁸⁰ British immigration began to rise after 1820, and pushed thousands of Boers, resentful of British rule, northwards to found their own – mostly short-lived and independent republics during the Great Trek of the late 1830s and early 1840s. In the process the Voortrekkers clashed repeatedly with the British, who had their own agenda with regard to colonial expansion in South Africa and with several African polities, including those of the Sotho and the Zulu nations. Eventually the Boers established two republics which had a longer lifespan: the South African Republic or Transvaal Republic (1852-1877; 1881-1902) and the Orange Free State (1854-1902). In 1902 Britain completed its military occupation of the Transvaal and Free State by concluding a treaty with the two Boer Republics following the Second Boer War 1899-1902.

In 1869 the Suez Canal was opened under Napoleon III, linking the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. The Canal was at first viewed sceptically by the British⁸¹, but once open its strategic value was recognised quickly. In 1875, the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Ismail Pasha's 44% shareholding in the Suez Canal for £4 million. Although this did not grant outright control of the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882.⁸² The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position,⁸³ but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople. This came into force in 1904 and made the Canal neutral territory, but de facto control was exercised by the British whose forces occupied the area until 1954.

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

British gains in southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion from South Africa northward, to urge a "Cape to Cairo" British controlled empire linking by rail the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich South.⁸⁶ In 1888 Rhodes with his privately owned British South Africa Company occupied and annexed territories named after him, Rhodesia.

Dominion status for white colonies

The path to independence for the white colonies of the British Empire began with the 1839 Durham Report, which proposed unification and self-government for the two Canadian provinces, as a solution to political unrest there. This was achieved with the passing of the British North America Act in 1867, where Canada was labelled a "dominion". Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government in 1900, New Zealand as a dominion, and Australia as a commonwealth.⁸⁷ The term "dominion status" was officially introduced at the Imperial Conference of 1907, to refer to Canada, Newfoundland, Australia and New Zealand. In 1910, the Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal and Orange Free State were joined together to form the Union of South Africa, also with dominion status.⁸⁸

World Wars (1914-1945)

World War I

Britain's declaration of war in 1914 on Germany and its allies, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, also committed the colonies and Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support during the war. Most of Germany's overseas colonies in Africa were quickly invaded and occupied, though German forces in German East Africa remained undefeated during the war. In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and Samoa respectively. The contributions of Australian and New Zealand troops during the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national consciousness at home, and marked a watershed in the transition of Australia and New Zealand from colonies to nations in their own right. The countries continue to commemorate this occasion on ANZAC Day. Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridge in a similar light.⁸⁹ The Dominions raised their own armies, but were under the British command structure, and very much integrated into the British fighting forces. Over 2.5 million men served in the armies of the Dominions, including 418,000 men from Canada, Australia 322,000, New Zealand 124,000, as well as many thousands of volunteers from the Crown Colonies. ⁹⁰ In 1917, the Imperial War Cabinet was set up, with representation from each of the Dominion Prime Ministers, to coordinate imperial policy. The First World War placed enormous financial strain on Britain and its empire with resources, cash and foreign assets being diverted for the war. In 1914 Britain had £750,000,000⁹¹ invested in the United States; by 1918 much of this had been sold in order to pay for the war effort.

Interwar period

Map showing British Empire in 1921 coloured pink

The end of the war brought peace, but the conflict undermined the pre-1914 economic stability,⁹² created a generation of disillusioned veterans and opened up the threat of political revolt.⁹³ Contemporary politicians like David Lloyd George noted that the “whole existing order in its political, social and economic aspects is questioned” ⁹⁴ and doubts about the empire began to grow in Britain itself.⁹⁵

The incorporation of new territory was accompanied by a bid for independence in the oldest territory. Following the delay to the implementation of Irish home rule and the 1916 Easter Rising, Sinn Féin won a majority of the Irish seats at Westminster in the 1918 British general election. The subsequent declaration of independence and the Anglo-Irish War ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The twenty six counties of the south were formed into the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown,⁹⁹ whilst the six counties of the province of Northern Ireland which had been established in 1920¹⁰⁰ remained a part of the United Kingdom.

The Jallianwalla Bagh in 1919, months after the massacre.

A similar struggle began in India when the post-war Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy political demand. ¹⁰¹ Concerns over communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar Conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by the Rowlatt Acts, creating tension,¹⁰² particularly in the Punjab, where repressive measures culminated in the Amritsar Massacre. In Britain this was widely viewed as saving India from anarchy, but there were many, including Churchill, who viewed it as a "monstrous event". ¹⁰³ The subsequent non-cooperation movement, although pervasive, was called off in March 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident. Although some political figures in India admired the Irish method, ¹⁰⁴ India did not go down the same path; discontent continued to simmer for the next twenty-five years, punctuated by successive rounds of repression (the Qissa Khwani bazaar massacre in 1930), and concession, (the Government of India Act 1935).

Demand for independence was less strident in other parts of the empire, but the ability of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy was recognised following the Chanak Crisis of 1922, after Britain declared war on Turkey without having first consulted them. After pressure from Ireland and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference declared the Dominions to be "autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another" within a "British Commonwealth of Nations".¹⁰⁵ This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster.¹⁰⁶ The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent.¹⁰⁷

British hegemony was also weakened at sea. The Royal Navy ended the war with almost as many capital ships as all the other navies combined,¹⁰⁸ but this soon changed with the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. Despite the signing of the Four-Power Treaty, a new balance of power was created in the Far East¹⁰⁹ as Britain accepted naval parity with the United States,¹¹⁰ terminating the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance and allowing Japan to develop a substantial fleet of its own.

The balance of power also changed in Europe. The war had generated huge debts and it proved impossible to reintroduce the gold standard.¹¹¹ This and other factors led to the Great Depression of 1929. Although the effects were comparatively mild in Britain, some parts of the empire were badly affected. ¹¹² The British came to rely more on the markets of the empire, tightening economic bonds even as political ties were weakened.¹¹³ In Europe, however, the economic downturn was generally severe and helped right-wing political parties to power. ¹¹⁴ Militaristic expansionism in Germany and Italy threatened the status quo, but in Britain defence spending did not become a high priority until the Second World War was clearly visible on the horizon. ¹¹⁵

World War II

Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown Colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions. Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand all soon declared war on Germany, but the Irish Free State chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war.¹¹⁶ After the Fall of France in 1940, Britain and its empire were left standing alone against Germany and its situation looked precarious. The British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill negotiated for money and arms from the United States, but the U.S. remained officially neutral. Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter in 1941, which included the statement that "the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live" should be respected. This wording was ambiguous as to whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany, or the peoples colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by the British, Americans and nationalist movements.¹¹⁷

In December 1941, Japan, launched in quick succession attacks on British Malaya, the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, and Hong Kong. Japan had steadily been growing as an imperial power in the Far East since its defeat of China in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895,¹¹⁸ envisioning a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under its leadership. In 1902, Japan and Britain signed the Anglo-Japanese Alliance which allowed Britain to leave the policing of the Pacific to Japan¹¹⁹ but the alliance fell apart in 1922 after the Washington Naval Conference when Britain opted to side with the United States.¹²⁰

The Japanese attacks on the British and American possessions in the Pacific had an immediate and long-lasting impact on Britain and its empire. Churchill's reaction to the entry of the United States into the war was that Britain was now assured of victory and the future of the empire was safe,¹²¹ but the manner in which the British rapidly surrendered irreversibly altered Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power.¹²²¹²³ Most damaging of all was the fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar.¹²⁴ The realisation that Britain could not defend its entire empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States, eventually resulting in the 1951 ANZUS Pact between the three nations, but excluding Britain itself.¹²⁵

Decolonisation and decline (1945–1997)

Though Britain and its empire emerged victorious from World War II, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for five hundred years, was now literally in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, to whom the balance of global power had now shifted.¹²⁶ Britain itself was left virtually bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a $3.5 billion loan from the United States,¹²⁷ the last instalment of which was repaid in 2006.¹²⁸

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

The "wind of change" ultimately meant that the British Empire's days were numbered, and on the whole, Britain adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies once stable, non-Communist governments were available to transfer power to, in contrast to France and Portugal,¹³⁰ which waged costly and ultimately unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact. Between 1945 and 1965 the number of people outside the UK itself under British rule fell from 700 million to 5 million, 3 million of whom were in Hong Kong.¹³¹

Initial disengagement

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

The pro-decolonisation Labour government elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the empire, that of Indian independence.¹³² India's two independence movements, the Indian National Congress, and the Muslim League, had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed on how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest and the mutiny of the Indian Royal Navy during 1946 led Attlee to promise independence no later than 1948, but when the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent to Britain's newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, partitioned independence was hastily brought forward to 15 August 1947.¹³³ The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan.¹³⁴ Millions of Muslims subsequently crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus in the reverse direction, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of the British Raj, and Ceylon gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan and Ceylon became members of the Commonwealth, though Burma chose not to join.

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

Following the defeat of Japan in World War II, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly reassume control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin. The fact that the guerillas 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, indpendence would be granted.¹³⁷ The Malayan Emergency, as it was known, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the Federation was joined with Singapore, Sarawak and British North Borneo to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-dominated Singapore left the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations.¹³⁸ Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union¹³⁹ and maintained its status until independence in 1984.

Suez and its aftermath

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

In 1951, the Conservative Party was returned to power in Britain, under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power relied on the continued existence of the empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain to maintain its preeminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India. However, Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would become independent by 1955.¹⁴⁰

In 1956 Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of the new British Prime

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