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British Empire

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: British History

   The British Empire in 1897, marked in pink, the traditional colour for
   Imperial British dominions on maps.
   Enlarge
   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 not only a major power but also the foremost
   power in the world. It was a product of the European age of discovery,
   which began with the global maritime explorations of the Iberian states
   in the late 15th century, that inaugurated the era of the European
   global empires.

   By 1913, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458
   million people, approximately one-quarter of the world's population. It
   covered about 36.6 million km² (14.2 million square miles), about a
   quarter of Earth's total land area. Though it has now mostly evolved
   into the Commonwealth of Nations, British influence remains strong
   throughout the world: in economic practice, legal and governmental
   systems, society, sports (such as cricket and football), and the
   English language itself, to name just a few.

   Because of its size at the peak of its power, it was often said that "
   the sun never sets on the British Empire" because the empire's span
   across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least
   one of its numerous colonies.

English Empire

Growth of the overseas empire

   Statue of John Cabot in Newfoundland, England's first overseas colony .
   Enlarge
   Statue of John Cabot in Newfoundland, England's first overseas colony .

   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 the English King Henry
   VII, who reigned from 1485 to 1509. Building on commercial links in the
   wool trade promoted during the reign of his predecessor, King Richard
   III, Henry established the modern English merchant marine system, which
   greatly expanded English shipbuilding and seafaring. The merchant
   marine also supplied the basis for the mercantile institutions that
   would play such a crucial role in English and, after the union with
   Scotland in 1707, British imperial ventures, including the
   Massachusetts Bay Company and the British East India Company. Henry's
   financial reforms made the English Exchequer solvent, which helped to
   underwrite the development of the Merchant Marine. Henry also ordered
   construction of the first English dry dock, at Portsmouth, and made
   improvements to England's small navy. Additionally, Henry sponsored the
   voyages of the Italian mariner John Cabot in 1496 and 1497 that
   established England's first overseas colony - a fishing settlement - in
   Newfoundland, which Cabot claimed on behalf of Henry.

   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 through plans
   for new docks, and the construction of 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 days.

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.

Elizabethan era

   Defeat of the Spanish Armada, by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg,
   painted 1796.
   Enlarge
   Defeat of the Spanish Armada, by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg,
   painted 1796.

   During the reign of the Tudor Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Drake
   circumnavigated the globe in the years 1577 to 1580, only the second to
   accomplish this feat after Ferdinand Magellan's expedition.

   In 1579, Drake landed somewhere in northern California and claimed for
   the English Crown what he named Nova Albion ("New Albion", Albion being
   an ancient name for England), though the claim was not followed by
   settlement. Subsequent maps spell out Nova Albion to the north of all
   New Spain. Thereafter, England's interests outside Europe grew
   steadily, promoted by John Dee, who coined the phrase "British Empire".
   An expert in navigation, he was visited by many of the early English
   explorers before and after their expeditions. He was a Welshman, and
   his use of the term "British" fitted with the Welsh origins of
   Elizabeth's Tudor family, although his conception of empire was derived
   from Dante's book Monarchia.

   Humphrey Gilbert followed on Cabot's original claim when he sailed to
   Newfoundland in 1583 and declared it an English colony on August 5 at
   St John's. Sir Walter Raleigh organised the first colony in North
   Carolina in 1587 at Roanoke Island. Both Gilbert's Newfoundland
   settlement and the Roanoke colony were short-lived, however, and had to
   be abandoned because of food shortages, severe weather, shipwrecks, and
   hostile encounters with indigenous tribes on the North-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.

Stuart era

   In 1604, King James I of England negotiated the Treaty of London,
   ending hostilities with Spain, and the first permanent English
   settlement followed in 1607 at Jamestown, Virginia. During the next
   three centuries, England extended its influence overseas and
   consolidated its political development at home with the 1707 Acts of
   Union, where the Parliament of England and the Scots Parliament were
   united in Westminster, London, as the Parliament of Great Britain, in
   turn giving birth to the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Scottish role

   There were several pre-union attempts at creating a Scottish overseas
   empire, with various Scottish settlements in North and South America.
   Nova Scotia was perhaps Scotland's greatest opportunity at establishing
   a permanent presence in the Americas, but its most infamous was the ill
   fated Darién scheme which attempted to establish a settlement colony
   and trading post in Panama to foster trade between Scotland and the Far
   East.

   After the Acts of Union 1707 many Scots, especially in Canada, Jamaica,
   India, Australia and New Zealand, took up posts as administrators,
   doctors, lawyers and teachers in what had become the new British
   Empire. Progressions in Scotland itself during the Scottish
   enlightenment led to advancements throughout the empire. Scots settled
   across the Empire as it developed and built up their own communities
   such as Dunedin in New Zealand.

Colonisation

   In 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed the island of Newfoundland as
   England's for Elizabeth I, reinforcing John Cabot's prior claim to the
   island in 1497, for Henry VII, as England's first overseas colony.
   Gilbert's shipwreck prevented ensuing settlement in Newfoundland, other
   than the seasonal cod fishermen who had frequented the island since
   1497. However, the Jamestown colonists, led by Captain John Smith,
   overcame the severe privations of the winter in 1607 to found England's
   first permanent overseas settlement. The empire thus took shape during
   the early 17th century, with the English settlement of the eastern
   colonies of North America, which would later become the original United
   States as well as Canada's Atlantic provinces, and the colonisation of
   the smaller islands of the Caribbean such as Saint Kitts, Barbados and
   Jamaica.

   The sugar-producing colonies of the Caribbean, where slavery became
   central to the economy, were at first England's most important and
   lucrative colonies. The American colonies provided tobacco, cotton, and
   rice in the south and naval materiel and furs in the north were less
   financially successful, but had large areas of good agricultural land
   and attracted far larger numbers of English emigrants.
   The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West.
   Enlarge
   The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West.

   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. The British
   victory over France in Seven Years War led to a stronger
   pro-independence movement on the part of the North American colonies,
   as many colonists no longer felt the need for British protection
   following the ousting of the French from 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. The colonies also committed genocide of the
   natives, most notably in Tasmania where no viable number exist.

Free trade and "informal empire"

   Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown (John Trumbull, 1797). The loss of
   the American colonies marked the end of the "first British Empire".
   Enlarge
   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, which was a result 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.
   The Battle of Waterloo marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the
   beginning of the Pax Britannica.
   Enlarge
   The Battle of Waterloo marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the
   beginning of the Pax Britannica.

   Some argue that the rise of free trade merely reflected Britain's
   economic position and was unconnected with any true philosophical
   conviction. Despite the earlier loss of 13 of Britain's North American
   colonies, the final defeat in Europe of Napoleonic France in 1815 left
   Britain the most successful international power. While the Industrial
   Revolution at home gave her an unrivalled economic leadership, the
   Royal Navy dominated the seas. The distraction of rival powers by
   European matters enabled Britain to pursue a phase of expansion of her
   economic and political influence through "informal empire" underpinned
   by free trade and strategic preeminence.

   Between the Congress of Vienna of 1815 and the Franco-Prussian War of
   1870, Britain was the world's sole industrialised power, with over 30%
   of the global industrial output in 1870. As the "workshop of the
   world", Britain could produce finished manufactures so efficiently and
   cheaply that they could undersell comparable locally produced goods in
   foreign markets. Given stable political conditions in particular
   overseas markets, Britain could prosper through free trade alone
   without having to resort to formal rule. In the Americas the informal
   British trade empire was backed by the shared interests of Britain in
   the tenets of the United States' Monroe Doctrine, which declared that
   the New World was no longer open to colonisation or political
   interference by Europeans. As the United States did not yet have the
   military strength to enforce this doctrine, the British were largely
   left with a free hand to enter the new markets in Latin America created
   after independence from Spain and Portugal, and British commercial
   supremacy lasted until the outbreak of World War I.

British East India Company

   The British East India Company was probably the most successful chapter
   in the British Empire's history as it was responsible for the
   annexation of most of the Indian subcontinent, which would become the
   British Empire's largest source of revenue, along with the conquest of
   Hong Kong, Singapore, Ceylon, Malaya (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. ^

   The Company also had interests along the routes to India from Great
   Britain. As early as 1620, the company attempted to lay claim to the
   Table Mountain region in South Africa, and later it occupied and ruled
   St Helena. Other events of note were The Company's colonization of Hong
   Kong and Singapore, the employment of infamous Captain Kidd to combat
   piracy, the cultivation and production of tea in India, the
   sequestoring of Napoleon Buonaparte captive on Saint Helena, and it
   earned the dubious distinction of having its products be the target of
   the Boston Tea Party in 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 Afghanistan and parts of eastern Persia). 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 British officers who
   were primarily English or Scottish. Such Indian soldiers were called
   sepoys.

Expansion

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

   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 defeated the Nawab on 23 June 1757 at the Battle of Plassey,
   mostly because of the treachery of the Nawab's former army chief Mir
   Jafar. Mir Jafar's treachery turned the battle into a mere skirmish.
   This victory, which resulted in the virtual conquest of Bengal,
   established the British East India Company as both a military and
   commercial power. However, the Company did not claim absolute authority
   over the territory for a long time. They preferred to rule through a
   puppet Nawab who could be blamed for the administrative failures caused
   by excessively avaricious economic exploitation of the territory by the
   Company. 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 of India's geographic and political regions by
   the mid 19th century 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 because of political unrest that was triggered by several
   political events. One such event that surely seemed trivial to the
   Company at the time, but that turned out to have dire consequences, was
   the Company's introduction of the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle. Its
   gunpowder containing paper cartridges were claimed to be lubricated
   with animal fat and had to be bitten open before the powder was poured
   into the muzzle. Eating cow or pig fat was forbidden for religious
   reasons for the vast majority of the soldiers. Beef products were
   forbidden for the Hindu majority, likewise pork for the large Muslim
   minority.

   Although Company and Enfield representatives insisted that neither cow
   nor pig fat were being used, the rumour persisted and many sepoys
   refused to follow orders involving the use of the weapons using those
   particular cartridges. Indian sepoy Mangal Pandey was hanged as a
   punishment for having attacked and injured British superiors at the
   introduction of the rifle increasing tension at a time when Indians had
   come to resent decades of British rule under which they felt like
   second class citizens; exploited and seen as incapable of Home Rule.

   In the past, Indians had feuded as much with other Indians as they did
   with the British. This has greatly aided the British in their conquest,
   for example, during The Battle of Plassey in which they benefit from
   the defection of the opposing army commander. There had yet to occur
   any sort of unified uprising against British authority. But in 1857, a
   number of current events such as the Enfield cartridge issue catalysed
   the Mutiny eventually bring about the end of the British East India
   Company's regime in India. Although Indians had achieved a great
   victory through common purpose in spite of sectional differences, their
   immediate situation turned for the worse.

   The Company's failure to demonstrate effective control over its
   conquered Indian territories 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. By 1857, India
   was a tremendously large part of the Empire's economy. The disaster of
   the Mutiny in particular had a tremendous influence on the Crown's
   policy regarding the most effective way to govern India. As a result,
   the Crown and British government assumed direct rule over the Indian
   sub-continent for 90 years following the dissolution of the Company.

   The period of direct rule in India is referred to as the The Raj during
   which the nations now known as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar
   were collectively known as British India.

Breakdown of Pax Britannica

   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
   Enlarge
   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.

Britain and the New Imperialism

   Queen Victoria and Benjamin Disraeli.
   Queen Victoria and Benjamin Disraeli.

   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 — the classic " divide and rule" strategy — left a
   legacy of partition and/or inter-communal difficulties in areas as
   diverse as Ireland, India, Zimbabwe, Cyprus, Sudan, and Uganda.

Britain and the scramble for Africa

   Cecil Rhodes- "the Colossus of Rhodes" spanning "Cape to Cairo".
   Enlarge
   Cecil Rhodes- "the Colossus of Rhodes" spanning "Cape to Cairo".

   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.

Home rule in white-settler colonies

   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.

The impact of the First World War

   British Empire memorial for the First World War in the Brussels
   cathedral.
   Enlarge
   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.

   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.
   Enlarge
   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

   A Great War memorial in Dublin.
   Enlarge
   A Great War memorial in Dublin.

   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.

Decolonisation and decline

   Mahatma Gandhi, one of the leaders of the Indian independence movement.
   Enlarge
   Mahatma Gandhi, one of the leaders of the Indian independence movement.

   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 (Ireland) the year before, and chose to remain legally neutral
   throughout the war. Australia went to war under the British
   declaration.

   The World War II can be best described as a Pyrrhic victory to the
   British Empire. The economical costs of WWII were far greater to
   British Empire than those of WWI, Britain was heavily bombed and the
   tonnage war cost the Empire almost its entire merchant fleet. 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.

   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.

   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.

   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.

   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 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
   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.

   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 the remnants of the British Empire.
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