British Empire

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British Empire overseas territories linked to Great Britain in a variety of constitutional relationships, established over a period of three centuries. The establishment of the empire resulted primarily from commercial and political motives and emigration movements (see imperialism ); its long endurance resulted from British command of the seas and preeminence in international commerce, and from the flexibility of British rule. At its height in the late 19th and early 20th cent., the empire included territories on all continents, comprising about one quarter of the world's population and area. Probably the outstanding impact of the British Empire has been the dissemination of European ideas, particularly of British political institutions and of English as a lingua franca, throughout a large part of the world.

The First Empire

The origins of the empire date from the late 16th cent. with the private commercial ventures, chartered and encouraged by the crown, of chartered companies . These companies sometimes had certain powers of political control as well as commercial monopolies over designated geographical areas. Usually they began by setting up fortified trading posts, but where no strong indigenous government existed the English gradually extended their powers over the surrounding area. In this way scattered posts were established in India and the East Indies (for spices, coffee, and tea), defying Portuguese and later Dutch hegemony, and in Newfoundland (for fish) and Hudson Bay (for furs), where the main adversaries were the French.

In the 17th cent. European demand for sugar and tobacco led to the growth of plantations on the islands of the Caribbean and in SE North America. These colonies, together with those established by Roman Catholics and Protestant dissenters in NE North America, attracted a considerable and diversified influx of European settlers. Organized by chartered companies, the colonies soon developed representative institutions, evolving from the company governing body and modeled on English lines.

The need for cheap labor to work the plantations fostered the growth of the African slave trade. New chartered companies secured posts on the African coasts as markets for captured slaves from the interior. An integrated imperial trade arose, involving the exchange of African slaves for West Indian molasses and sugar, English cloth and manufactured goods, and American fish and timber. To achieve the imperial self-sufficiency required by prevailing theories of mercantilism , and, more immediately, to increase British wealth and naval strength, the Navigation Acts were passed, restricting colonial trade exclusively to British ships and making England the sole market for important colonial products.

Developments in the late 17th and early 18th cent. were characterized by a weakening of the Spanish and Dutch empires, exposing their territories to British encroachment, and by growing Anglo-French rivalry in India, Canada, and Africa. At this time the British government attempted to assert greater direct control over the expanding empire. In the 1680s the revision of certain colonial charters to bring the North American and West Indian colonies under the supervision of royal governors resulted in chronic friction between the governors and elected colonial assemblies.

The early 18th cent. saw a reorganization and revitalization of many of the old chartered companies. In India, from the 1740s to 1763, the British East India Company and its French counterpart were engaged in a military and commercial rivalry in which the British were ultimately victorious. The political fragmentation of the Mughal empire permitted the absorption of one area after another by the British. The Treaty of Paris (1763; see under Paris, Treaty of ) firmly established the British in India and Canada, but the financial burdens of war involved the government in difficulties with the American colonies. The success of the American Revolution marked the end of the first British Empire.

The Second Empire

The voyages of Capt. James Cook to Australia and New Zealand in the 1770s and new conquests in India after 1763 opened a second phase of territorial expansion. The victories of the Napoleonic Wars added further possessions to the empire, among them Cape Colony, Mauritius, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Trinidad and Tobago, St. Lucia, British Guiana (Guyana), and Malta. During the second empire mercantilist ideals and regulations were gradually abandoned in response to economic and political developments in Great Britain early in the 19th cent. Britain's new industrial supremacy lent greater force to doctrines of free trade , which, as part of their critique of mercantilism, questioned the economic value of political ties between the colonies and the mother country.

The plight of large nonwhite populations within the empire became a matter of concern to humanitarians. Abolition of the slave trade (1807) and of slavery (1833) was accompanied in the colonies by efforts to improve the lot of indigenous groups. Better communications and the establishment of a regular civil service facilitated the development of a more efficient colonial administration. But the growth, notably in the English-speaking colonies, of national identity and of relative national self-sufficiency, as well as a trend of opinion in Britain favoring colonial self-government, made the British, now engaged in liberalizing their own governing institutions, willing to concede certain powers of self-government to the white colonies. In 1839, Lord Durham, in response to unrest in Canada, issued his "Report on the Affairs of British North America." Durham stated that to retain its colonies Britain should grant them a large measure of internal self-government.

The British North America Act of 1867 inaugurated a pattern of devolution followed in most of the European-settled colonies by which Parliament gradually surrendered its direct governing powers; thus Australia and New Zealand followed Canada in becoming self-governing dominions. On the other hand, the British assumed greater responsibility in Africa and in India, where the Indian Mutiny had resulted (1858) in the final transfer of power from the East India Company to the British government. To govern territories with large indigenous populations, the crown colony system was developed. Such colonies, of which one of the most enduring was Hong Kong, were ruled by a British governor and consultative councils composed primarily of the governor's nominees; these, in turn, often delegated considerable powers of local government to local rulers.

In the later decades of the 19th cent. there occurred a revival of European competition for empire in which the British acquired or consolidated vast holdings in Africa—such as Nigeria, the Gold Coast (later Ghana), Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe), South Africa, and Egypt—and in Asia—such as Burma (Myanmar) and Malaya. The size and wealth of the empire and the anxieties produced by European colonial competition stimulated a desire for imperial solidarity. The Imperial Conference , begun in 1887, represented an attempt to strengthen Britain's ties with those colonies that had become self-governing territories.

From Empire to Commonwealth

World War I brought the British Empire to the peak of its expansion, but in the years that followed came its decline. Victory added, under the system of mandates , new territories, including Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, and several former German territories in Africa and Asia. Imperial contributions had considerably strengthened the British war effort (more than 200,000 men from the overseas empire died in the war; the dominions and India signed the Versailles Treaty and joined the League of Nations), but at the same time expectations were raised among colonial populations that an increased measure of self-government would be granted.

Nationalist agitation against economic disparities, often stimulated by acts of racial discrimination by British settlers, was particularly strong in India (see Indian National Congress ) and in parts of Africa. Although loath to lessen its hold over countries it had done much to develop, and thereby to incur great economic and political loss, Britain gradually capitulated to the pressures of nationalist sentiment. Iraq gained full sovereignty in 1932; British privileges in Egypt were modified by treaty in 1936; and concessions were made toward self-government in India and later in the African colonies.

In 1931 the Statute of Westminster officially recognized the independent and equal status under the crown of the former dominions within a British Commonwealth of Nations , thus marking the advent of free cooperation among equal partners. After World War II self-government advanced rapidly in all parts of the empire. In 1947, India was partitioned and independence granted to the new states of India and Pakistan. In 1948 the mandate over Palestine was relinquished, and Burma (Myanmar) gained independence as a republic. Other parts of the empire, notably in Africa, gained independence and subsequently joined the Commonwealth. In 1997 Hong Kong passed to China and, in the opinion of many historians, the British Empire definitively ended.

While the empire may have faded into history, Great Britain still continues to administer many dependencies throughout the world. They include Gibraltar in the Mediterranean; the Falkland Islands, South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands, and St. Helena (including Ascension and Tristan da Cunha) in the South Atlantic; Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands in the West Indies; and Pitcairn Island in the Pacific. These dependencies have varying degrees of self-government. In 1982 Britain clashed with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, retaking them by force after Argentina, which also claims them, had invaded and seized the islands.

Bibliography

See The Cambridge History of the British Empire (8 vol., 1929–1963); R. A. Huttenback, The British Imperial Experience (1966); J. A. Williamson, A Short History of British Expansion (2 vol., 6th ed. 1967); C. E. Carrington, The British Overseas (2d ed. 1968); C. Cross, The Fall of the British Empire (1968); G. S. Graham, A Concise History of the British Empire (1970); C. Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (1972); T. O. Lloyd, The British Empire, 1558–1982 (1984); A. Clayton, The British Empire as a Superpower, 1919–1939 (1986); A. J. Christopher, The British Empire at Its Zenith (1988); P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (rev. ed. 2003); N. Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2003); S. Schama, A History of Britain: The Fate of Empire, 1776–2000 (2003); P. Clarke, The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Birth of the Pax Americana (2008); P. Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781–1997 (2008); J. Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System 1830–1970 (2009).

British empire. At its apogee, around 1920, the British empire was the greatest—the biggest, at any rate—ever known. It was reputed to cover a quarter of the world's land area, and a fifth of its population. Most of that, however, was of recent provenance. Like all mighty oaks, this one had a tiny origin. A medieval English proto-empire can be dimly made out, in 12th–13th-cent. Ireland and Gascony. Most historians date the beginnings of the empire proper, however, from Tudor times. It grew out of the great seafaring voyages of that age. Britain was a little behind the Spanish and Portuguese, so initially her empire did not compare with theirs. They took the plums. Britain had to make do with North America and the Caribbean, which were not so obviously valuable. The first British colony was Virginia, which was settled in 1585, but not for long. A ship returning four years later found that the colonists had disappeared. In 1607 the colony was re-established, and this time survived. Other places were also colonized, especially some Caribbean islands, and more of the North American coast. Trading posts were established in India. These became the two main focuses of British imperial dominion for the next two centuries.

It was mainly a commercial empire, run by chartered monopoly companies, and defended by the Royal navy. Britain made sure its benefits accrued to her exclusively, by a series of Navigation Acts passed in the mid-17th cent. to prevent the colonies dealing with anyone else. That was to cause trouble later on. Meanwhile, however, the empire expanded steadily, partly through the extension of British trade, and partly as a result of wars with other colonial powers. The Seven Years War, for example, saw Britain take control of much of India (1756–7). That marked the peak of what later came to be called the ‘first’ British empire, which came to an end with the rebellion of the thirteen American colonies, originally against Britain's trading restrictions, in 1776.

The loss of America (except Canada) threatened to mark the beginning of the end of the British empire as a whole. That was because the idea of exclusive trading colonies was coming under attack on other fronts. Adam Smith, for example, taught that they undermined the ‘wealth of nations’, rather than promoting it. In the early 19th cent. most liberals believed that empires were things of the past. For years historians followed them in assuming that the early and mid-19th cent. was one of the British empire's low points. In fact, however, it continued to expand. Even while America was being lost, Captain Cook was sniffing out new imperial possibilities in the antipodes. The first colony there, New South Wales, was established in 1788. Sierra Leone in west Africa was established as a home for freed slaves at around the same time. Other gains—Trinidad, Malta, Gibraltar, the Cape of Good Hope—were made as a result of the French Revolutionary wars. Later came Tasmania, Singapore, Burma, Western Australia, New Zealand, Aden, Hong Kong, Natal … a full list would be tedious, but would also illustrate the continuity of Britain's imperial history at this time. Most of this expansion was due to the requirements of Britain's ever-expanding trade. By the 1880s, when the conventional view used to be that the empire picked up again, the bulk of it was already in place.

The difference about the 1880s was that Britons thereafter became infused with a conscious mood of imperialism. They sought empire deliberately, instead of merely accepting its growth in what the imperialist J. R. Seeley called ‘a fit of absence of mind’. That may have had some effect on this phase of its expansion, though it has to be said that much of it took place under non-imperialists, like Gladstone. It was he who took control of Egypt in 1882, for example, though strictly—perhaps to save his anti-imperialist face—this was never called a colony. That sparked off the Scramble for Africa, which added much of the eastern and southern part of the continent to Britain's collection. The culmination of this phase was the second Boer war (1899–1902). The only substantial additions to the British empire after this were the ‘mandated’ territories—ex-German and Ottoman possessions, including much of the Middle East—which were allocated to it in the wake of the First World War. They too were not meant to be ‘colonies’, though most people at the time regarded them as such.

This was the empire's zenith. It was huge. In 1901 an imperial census reckoned its total population was 398,401,404, but even that may have been an underestimate, as it apparently never occurred to the heads of households in some colonies that the British wanted them to count their women too. It had a presence in every habitable continent, giving rise to the boast that ‘the sun never set’ on it: though one subversive joke suggested that this was only because ‘God doesn't trust the Brits in the dark’. Most Britons felt it was beneficial: ‘the greatest secular agency for good that the world has seen’, according to Lord Rosebery, though there were other opinions, voiced by J. A. Hobson. The wonder was that so small a country as Britain, at the very edge of Europe, was able to exercise so wide a sway. How was it done?

The simple answer to that is: ‘with difficulty’. Britain's empire would have been far too much for her, if she really had tried to dominate it. She succeeded in holding it mainly by being flexible, and persuading others to take much of the strain. In the ‘white’ dominions these were the European settlers, who were given effective self-government from early on in the 19th cent., in exchange for which they agreed to look after their ‘natives’ themselves. That often meant exploiting, enslaving, and even extirpating them, while the Colonial Office in London looked on helplessly. Elsewhere local governors utilized divisions amongst natives cleverly, or adopted a policy of preserving native social and power structures, so as to keep disruption to a minimum. This, however, diluted Britain's real control. Collaborators needed to be appeased. Later they proved less willing, especially as Britain's prosperity and strength came to look more vulnerable. That, in the end, was what brought the empire down, in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the process of decolonization began.

The empire left legacies on both sides. For the ex-colonies it brought stability for a while, though sometimes only by bottling up natural conflicts that were bound to erupt later. It helped the spread of capitalism, Christianity, parliamentary institutions, English as a lingua franca, and (most beneficially) cricket. Afterwards it conferred automatic membership of a new club, the Commonwealth of Nations, of which most ex-colonies availed themselves. So far as Britain is concerned, the balance sheet is controversial. She may not have profited as much as she thought from the empire. It can be argued that it held her back industrially; for example, by boosting the public schools, whose paternalist ethos was necessary to furnish its governors, but disastrous for the entrepreneurial spirit. Its collapse was felt as a loss, however, economically and emotionally. Many of the country's problems in the second half of the 20th cent. were undoubtedly aggravated by her difficulty in coming to terms with its disappearance. On the other hand it provided the later British film industry, while it lasted, with some splendid locations and plots.

Bernard Porter

Bibliography

Lloyd, T. , The British Empire, 1558–1983 (Oxford, 1984);
Porter, B. , The Lion's Share: A Short History of British Imperialism 1850–1983 (1985).

British empire At its apogee, around 1920, the British empire was the largest ever known, reputed to cover a quarter of the world's land area, and a fifth of its population. Like all mighty oaks, this one had a tiny origin. It grew out of the seafaring voyages of the Tudor age. The first British colony was Virginia, settled in 1585, but not for long. A ship returning four years later found that the colonists had disappeared. In 1607 the colony was re‐established, and survived. Other places were also colonized, especially some Caribbean islands. Trading posts were established in India.

It was mainly a commercial empire, run by chartered monopoly companies, and defended by the Royal Navy. Britain made sure its benefits accrued to her exclusively, by a series of Navigation Acts passed in the mid‐17th cent. to prevent the colonies dealing with anyone else. The Seven Years War saw Britain take control of much of India (1756–7). That marked the peak of what later came to be called the ‘first’ British empire, which came to an end with the rebellion of the thirteen American colonies in 1776.

The loss of America (except Canada) threatened the British empire as a whole. In fact, however, it continued to expand. Even while America was being lost, Captain Cook was sniffing out new possibilities inthe antipodes. The first colony there, New South Wales, was established in 1788. Sierra Leone in west Africa was established as a home for freed slaves atthe same time. Other gains—Trinidad, Malta, Gibraltar, the Cape of Good Hope—were made as a result of the French Revolutionary wars.

In the 1880s Britons became infused with a conscious mood of imperialism.They sought empire deliberately, instead of merely accepting its growth in what the imperialist J. R. Seeley called ‘a fit of absence of mind’. It sparked off the Scramble for Africa, which added much of the eastern and southern part of the continent to Britain's collection. The culmination of this phase was the second Boer War (1899–1902). The only substantial additions to the British empire after this were the ‘mandated’ territories—ex‐German and Ottoman possessions—which were allocated to it in the wake of the First World War.

This was the empire's zenith. Most Britons felt it was beneficial: ‘the greatest secular agency for good that the world has Seen’, according to Lord Rosebery, though there were other opinions, voiced by J. A. Hobson. The wonder was that so small a country as Britain was able to exercise so wide a sway. How was it done?

The simple answer to that is: ‘with difficulty’. Britain's empire would have been too much for her, if she really had tried to dominate it. She succeeded in holding it mainly by persuading others to take the strain. In the ‘white’ dominions these were the European settlers, who were given effective self‐government from early on in the 19th cent. Elsewhere local governors utilized divisions amongst natives, or adopted a policy of preserving native social and power structures, so as to keep disruption to a minimum. Every colony had its class of collaborators. Later they proved less willing, especially as Britain's strength came to look more vulnerable. That, in the end, was what brought the empire down, in the aftermath of the Second World War, when decolonization began.

The empire left legacies on both sides. For the ex‐colonies it brought stability for a while. It helped the spread of capitalism, Christianity, parliamentary institutions, English as a lingua franca, and (most beneficially) cricket. Afterwards it conferred membership of a new club, the Commonwealth of Nations. So far as Britain is concerned, the balance sheet is controversial. She may not have profited as much as she thought from the empire. Its collapse was felt as a loss, however, economically and emotionally. Many of the country's problems in the second half of the 20th cent. were undoubtedly aggravated by her difficulty in coming to terms with its disappearance.

British empire Overseas territories ruled by Britain from the 16th to the 20th century. Historians distinguish two empires. The first, based mainly on commercial ventures (such as sugar and tobacco plantations), missionary activities and slave trading, resulted in the creation of British colonies in the Caribbean and North America in the 17th century. This ‘First Empire’ was curtailed by the loss of 13 US colonies, at the end of the American Revolution (1775–81). The ‘Second Empire’ was created in the 19th century, with Queen Victoria its empress. The East India Company acquired a larger trading empire as a result of the Napoleonic Wars. Colonialism increased dramatically from the 1820s. British expansion was predominantly in the Far East, Australia (initially with the penal colonies), Africa and India. As a result of the Indian Mutiny (1857), the British government assumed direct responsibility for the administration of India. In the “scramble” for Africa, imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes were thwarted in their desire to create a continent-wide empire by the South African Wars. By 1914 the empire comprised c.25% of the Earth's land surface and population. Virtually all the constituent members gained independence in the period after World War II. Most subsequently became members of the Commonwealth.

Empire, British, see British Empire