British Empire

1. British Empire

2. British Empire

4. British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England between the late 16th and early 18th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913 the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, 23 per cent of the world population at the time, and by 1920 it covered 35,500,000 km2 (13,700,000 sq mi), 24 percent of the Earth's total land area. As a result, its constitutional, legal, linguistic, and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was described as "the empire on which the sun never sets", as the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories. During the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France, and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia. A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left England (Britain, following the 1707 Act of Union with Scotland) the dominant colonial power in North America. Britain became the dominant power in the Indian subcontinent after the East India Company's conquest of Mughal Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.

5. British Empire The American War of Independence resulted in Britain losing some of its oldest and most populous colonies in North America by 1783. British attention then turned towards Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. After the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), Britain emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century and expanded its imperial holdings. The period of relative peace (1815–1914) during which the British Empire became the global hegemon was later described as "Pax Britannica" ("British Peace"). Alongside the formal control that Britain exerted over its colonies, its dominance of much of world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many regions, such as Asia and Latin America. Increasing degrees of autonomy were granted to its white settler colonies, some of which were reclassified as dominions. By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britain's economic lead. Military and economic tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, during which Britain relied heavily on its empire. The conflict placed enormous strain on its military, financial, and manpower resources. Although the empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after World War I, Britain was no longer the world's pre-eminent industrial or military power. In the Second World War, Britain's colonies in East Asia and Southeast Asia were occupied by the Empire of Japan. Despite the final victory of Britain and its allies, the damage to British prestige helped accelerate the decline of the empire. India, Britain's most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence as part of a larger decolonisation movement, in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire.

6. British Empire The Suez Crisis confirmed Britain's decline as a global power, and the transfer of Hong Kong to China in 1997 marked for many the end of the British Empire. Fourteen overseas territories remain under British sovereignty. After independence, many former British colonies joined the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states. Sixteen of these, including the United Kingdom, retain a common monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II. The Suez Crisis, or the Second Arab–Israeli warand the Sinai War in Israel, was an invasion of Egypt in late 1956 by Israel, followed by the United Kingdom and France. The aims were to regain control of the Suez Canal for the Western powers and to remove Egyptian president GamalAbdel Nasser, who had just nationalised the foreign-owned Suez Canal Company, which administered the canal. After the fighting had started, political pressure from the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Nations led to a withdrawal by the three invaders. The episode humiliated the United Kingdom and France and strengthened Nasser.

7. British Empire The foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead an expedition to discover a route to Asia via the North Atlantic. Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, and made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland. He believed he had reached Asia, and there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but he did not return from this voyage and it is unknown what happened to his ships. A replica of the Matthew, John Cabot's ship used for his second voyage to the New World

8. British Empire No further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, during the last decades of the 16th century. In the meantime, the 1533 Statute in Restraint of Appeals had declared "that this realm of England is an Empire". The Protestant Reformation turned England and Catholic Spain into implacable enemies. In 1562, Elizabeth I encouraged the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa with the aim of establishing an Atlantic slave trade. This effort was rebuffed and later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth I gave her blessing to further privateering raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic, laden with treasure from the New World. At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was the first to use the term "British Empire") were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own empire. By this time, Spain had become the dominant power in the Americas and was exploring the Pacific Ocean, Portugal had established trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River area, later to become New France. Although England tended to trail behind Portugal, Spain, and France in establishing overseas colonies, it established its first overseas colony in 16th century Ireland by settling it with Protestants from England drawing on precedents dating back to the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169. Several people who helped establish colonies in Ireland later played a part in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country men.

9. British Empire African slaves working in 17th-century Virginia, by an unknown artist, 1670 The British colonization of the Americas was the history of establishment of control, settlement, and colonization of the continents of the Americas by England, Scotland and Great Britain (after 1707). Colonization efforts began in the 17th century with failed attempts by England to establish permanent colonies in the North. The first permanent British colony was established in Jamestown, Virginia in 1607. Approximately 30,000 Algonquian peoples lived in the region at the time. Over the next several centuries more colonies were established in North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Though most British colonies in the Americas eventually gained independence, some colonies have opted to remain under Britain's jurisdiction as British Overseas Territories.

10. British Empire The first documented settlement of Europeans in the Americas was established by Norse people led by Leif Erikson around 1000 AD in what is now Newfoundland, called Vinland by the Norse. Later European exploration of North America resumed with Christopher Columbus's 1492 expedition sponsored by Spain. English exploration began almost a century later. Sir Walter Raleigh established the short-lived Roanoke Colony in 1585. The 1607 settlement of the Jamestown colony grew into the Colony of Virginia and Virgineola (settled unintentionally by the shipwreck of the Virginia Company's Sea Venture in 1609) quickly renamed The Somers Isles (though the older Spanish name of Bermuda has resisted replacement). In 1620, a group of Puritans established a second permanent colony on the coast of Massachusetts. Several other English colonies were established in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries. With the authorization of a royal charter, the Hudson's Bay Company established the territory of Rupert's Land in the Hudson Bay drainage basin. The English also established or conquered several colonies in the Caribbean, including Barbados and Jamaica. England captured the Dutch colony of New Netherland in the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the mid-17th century, leaving North America divided amongst the English, Spanish, and French empires.

11. British Empire French colony of Canada, as well as several Caribbean territories, in 1763. With the assistance of France and Spain, many of the North American colonies gained independence from Britain through victory in the American Revolutionary War, which ended in 1783. Historians refer to the British Empire after 1783 as the "Second British Empire"; this period saw Britain increasingly focus on Asia and Africa instead of the Americas, and increasingly focus on the expansion of trade rather than territorial possessions. Nonetheless, Britain continued to colonize parts of the Americas in the 19th century, taking control of British Columbia and establishing the colonies of the Falkland Islands and British Honduras. Britain also gained control of several colonies, including Trinidad and British Guiana, following the 1815 defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars. In the mid-19th century, Britain began the process of granting self-government to its remaining colonies in North America. Most of these colonies joined the Confederation of Canada in the 1860s or 1870s, though Newfoundland would not join Canada until 1949. Canada gained full autonomy following the passage of the Statute of Westminster 1931, though it retained various ties to Britain and still recognizes the British monarch as head of state. Following the onset of the Cold War, most of the remaining British colonies in the Americas gained independence between 1962 and 1983. Many of the former British colonies are part of the Commonwealth of Nations, a political association chiefly consisting of former colonies of the British Empire.

12. British Empire By the end of the 17th century, the Iberian Union of Spain and Portugal had colonized much of the Americas, but other parts of the Americas had not yet been colonized by European powers

13. British Empire Following the first voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492, Spain and Portugal established colonies in the New World, beginning the European colonization of the Americas. France and England, the two other major powers of 15th-century Western Europe, employed explorers soon after the return of Columbus's first voyage. In 1497, King Henry VII of England dispatched an expedition led by John Cabot to explore the coast of North America, but the lack of precious metals or other riches discouraged both the Spanish and English from permanently settling in North America during the early 17th century. Later explorers such as Martin Frobisher and Henry Hudson sailed to the New World in search of a Northwest Passage between the Atlantic Ocean and Asia, but were unable to find a viable route. Europeans established fisheries in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and traded metal, glass, and cloth for food and fur, beginning the North American fur trade. During mid-1585 Bernard Drake launched an expedition to Newfoundland which crippled the Spanish and Portuguese fishing fleets there from which they never recovered. This would have consequences in terms of English colonial expansion and settlement. In 1606, King James I of England granted charters to both the Plymouth Company and the London Company for the purpose of establishing permanent settlements in North America. In 1607, the London Company established a permanent colony at Jamestown on the Chesapeake Bay, but the Plymouth Company's Popham Colony proved short-lived. Approximately 30,000 Algonquian peoples lived in the region at the time.

14. British Empire Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, was established during the reign of King James I of England In 1609, the Sea Venture, flagship of the English London Company, better known as the Virginia Company, bearing Admiral Sir George Somers and the new Lieutenant-Governor for Jamestown, Sir Thomas Gates, was deliberately driven onto the reef off the archipelago of Bermuda to prevent its foundering during a hurricane on the 25th of July. The 150 passengers and crew built two new ships, the Deliverance and Patience and most departed Bermuda again for Jamestown on 11 May, 1610. Two men remained behind, and were joined by a third after the Patience returned again, then departed for England (it had been meant to return to Jamestown after gathering more food in Bermuda), ensuring that Bermuda remained settled, and in the possession of England and the London Company from 1609 to 1612, when more settlers and the first Lieutenant-Governor arrived from England following the extension of the Royal Charter of the London Company to officially add Bermuda to the territory of Virginia.

15. British Empire Thirteen Colonies of North America: Dark Red = New England colonies. Bright Red = Middle Atlantic colonies. Red-brown = Southern colonies. The New England Colonies of British America included Connecticut Colony, the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony, and the Province of New Hampshire, as well as a few smaller short-lived colonies. The New England colonies were part of the Thirteen Colonies and eventually became five of the six states in New England, with Plymouth Colony absorbed into Massachusetts and Maine separating from it. Captain John Smith's 1616 work A Description of New England first applied the term "New England" to the coastal lands from Long Island Sound to Newfoundland.

16. British Empire The English royal charters granted land to the north to Queen Elizabeth and land to the south to the London Company. England, France, and the Netherlands made several attempts to colonize New England early in the 17th century, and those nations were often in contention over lands in the New World. French nobleman Pierre Dugua Sieur de Monts established a settlement on Saint Croix Island, Maine in June 1604 under the authority of the King of France. Nearly half the settlers perished due to the harsh winter and scurvy, and the survivors moved north out of New England to Port-Royal of Nova Scotia (see symbol "R" on map to the right) in the spring of 1605.

17. The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773.[1] The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by the Townshend Acts. The Sons of Liberty strongly opposed the taxes in the Townshend Act as a violation of their rights. Protesters, some disguised as American Indians, destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company.

18. British Empire The loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by some historians as the event defining the transition between the "first" and "second" empires Rise of the "Second" British Empire (1783–1815) James Cook's mission was to find the alleged southern continent Terra Australis. Since 1718, transportation to the American colonies had been a penalty for various offences in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year. Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government turned to Australia. British territories in the Americas, 1763–1776, extending much further than the Thirteen Colonies on the Atlantic coast

19. British Empire The Rhodes Colossus—Cecil Rhodes spanning "Cape to Cairo" British decolonisation in Africa. By the end of the 1960s, all but Rhodesia (the future Zimbabwe) and the South African mandate of South West Africa (Namibia) had achieved recognised independence

21. British Empire Robert Clive's victory at the Battle of Plassey established the East India Company as a military as well as a commercial power. The Battle of Plassey was a decisive victory of the British East India Company over the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies on 23 June 1757, under the leadership of Robert Clive, which was possible due to the defection of Mir Jafar, who was Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah's commander in chief. The battle helped the Company seize control of Bengal. Over the next hundred years, they seized control of most of the Indian subcontinent, Myanmar, and Afghanistan.

22. British Empire

23. British Empire

25. British West Indies in 1900 The British West Indies (BWI) were the British territories in the West Indies: Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, British Guiana (now Guyana) and Trinidad and Tobago. Other territories include Bermuda, and the former British Honduras (now Belize). Before the decolonisation period in the later 1950s and 1960s the term was used to include all British colonies in the region as part of the British Empire Following the independence of most of the territories from the United Kingdom, the term Commonwealth Caribbean is now used.