The British Empire

By Qasim cheema

Introduction
At its peak, the British Empire was the largest formal empire that the world had ever known. As such, its power and influence stretched all over the globe; shaping it in all manner of ways. This site is dedicated to analysing the history of the British Empire: The triumphs, the humiliations, the good that it brought and the bad that it inflicted. For better or worse the British Empire had a massive impact on the history of the world. It is for this reason that this site tries to bring to life the peoples, cultures, adventures and domination that made the Empire such a powerful institution. It is neither an apology for, nor a nostalgic reminiscince of the institution that so dominated the world for over two centuries. Rather, it analyses and describes the vast institution that so influenced the shape of the world that we see today.
The Purpose of the Site
First of all, I would like to make it clear that this site is not a rigourous academic site. I am sure there are plenty of mistakes and oversights on my part; for which I apologise in advance. My interest in the subject is purely that of a personal journey of discovery; to give myself a reason to research what I regard as a fascinating subject. As long as I can remember, I have always been interested in imperial stories, films or histories. If I analyse it, I think that I am interested in the concept of why men and women were prepared to leave the world that they did know for one which was totally alien to them. Of course, not everyone had the luxury of choice; a decision was often forced upon many. But even so, I am interested in how people coped with starting new lives in exotic or alien lands with different cultures, geography, languages, etc…, etc… Often they tried to bring their own culture with them, although this did not always work as intended. Did they shape the destination or did the destination shape them? And what of the different experiences? What about those who went temporarily as part of a job or a contract compared to those who were trying to start a completely new life with no intention of ever returning home? There were huge population flows around and between the various colonies. This was an era before passports and immigration laws. If you had the means to pay your passage (or have it provided for you), it was more than possible for you to move around this vast institution. Many colonies would encourage migration in order to create a workforce or a sustainable population to inhabit and defend it. Indeed, what were the motivations behind the creation of the Empire itself? And who were the people who made it possible? These are just some of the questions and themes that you will find addressed around this site.
About the Authors I myself am a history teacher at a secondary school in Plymouth, Britain (although I should say that I do not actually get to teach a great deal of imperial history). I started the site in 1996 to try and combine my two teaching subjects of ICT and history. I felt that creating a web-based history site would provide me with an excuse to hone both sets of skills. I do not think that I realised just how large and popular this site would become over the years. It is currently over 7,000 pages in length and grows insatiably.
I have been privileged to have been aided by a whole series of contributors over the years. There are too many to mention here, but all submissions, images, etc… are gratefully acknowledged to the original authors or donors throughout the site.

One person that I should mention is my wife, Cheryl. She has recently started to spend a lot more time supporting the site and its development. Whilst she was originally a teacher herself, she diverted from that track in order to run her own business. Her role here then is to focus on the “non-historical” aspects of maintaining this website, e.g. the administration, creation and maintenance of databases and proof-reading (she has her work cut out for her).

Can you Help? If you have any material that you would like to add to the site then do not hesitate to contact me. Whether you have some old family photos, an article that you have written, a book or film review or whatever, if it is connected to the British Empire in some way, I would be delighted to host it on the site. Of course, there is a bulletin board where you can post short commentaries, requests or join in the discussion. The only rules are that posts are connected to imperial history in some form or another and that a high level of civility and politeness is maintained at all times. Otherwise, anything goes.
What Period of History is Covered?
Defining the start and finish for the dates of the British Empire has not been an easy task. It is generally divided into two distinct Empires. The First Empire revolved primarily, but not exclusively, around the settler colonies of the Americas. These would be termed the Thirteen Colonies and would gain their independence from Britain in 1783. The Second Empire then developed from the remnants of the First – particularly India – and were added to during the Napoleonic Wars and then throughout the nineteenth century and even into the beginning of the twentieth century. It is this Second, predominantly Victorian, Empire that most people associate with the British Empire. This site actually covers both – but it is useful to be able to separate the two entities. I tend to use the convenient bookends of 1497 to 1997. It makes for a pleasing five hundred year synchronicity. The first date marks the very first overseas British colony of Newfoundland claimed as a way of trying to guard access to the rich fisheries discovered near there. The 1997 date represents the British withdrawing from their last significant colony of Hong Kong. This date is a little more arbitrary in that there are just over a dozen territories still directly governed by Britain scattered across the globe. I suppose the Falkland Islands represent the biggest of these remaining colonies. It is actually said that the British territories are still scattered enough around the world that the sun still does not technically set on the British Empire. I believe that Pitcairn Island just about allows the sun to track over the Pacific Ocean and still be shining directly on administered British territory. Of course the sun never sets on the Empire on this website.
What Period is not Covered?
Confusingly, the two distinct British Empires outlined above are sometimes referred to as the Second and Third Empires respectively. It has been known for historians to refer to the Norman expansion of their Angle-lands (England) as being a distinctive Empire building era of its own. This empire building would include the addition of Wales, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the first establishment of outposts in Ireland. It does get confusing because the Normans themselves came from the North of France and so was it a Norman/French Empire or a distinctive English Empire? In fact the Normans were descended from the Viking settlers who themselves had settled in the North of France – so was it a Viking Empire even? This Anglo-French Empire, if I can call it that, would later be referred to as the Angevin Empire. It really began to disintegrate into the two distinctive countries of England and France during the Hundred Years War. Although even after that, England maintained a toe-hold in the north of France at Calais until Mary Tudor finally lost control of it in 1558, although the Channel Islands do still technically remain part of the UK. This website does not go into this medieval period at all. It does not really expand on the creation of Britain or the formation of the United Kingdom; the one exception being Ireland which had a profoundly complicated relationship with Britain and the imperial experience in general. I have regarded Wales and Scotland as integral parts of Great Britain, allowing for the fact that Scotland did not join the Union until 1707, partly as a result of its financially ruinous experience with its own Scottish Empire at Darien/New Caledonia. Ironically, the Scottish in particular would thrive within the opportunities provided by the British Empire. Technically, Britain should only be used from this 1707 date onwards, so the period of 1497 to 1707 should really be termed an English Empire – although Wales was part of that political entity.
Additionally, I have tended to avoid ‘European’ politics, wars and diplomacy unless they had a direct bearing on the Empire itself. For example, I have not covered any of the European campaigns of the Napoleonic Wars, but have mentioned many of the colonial clashes and the hoovering up of French and Dutch colonies by the Royal Navy. The two World Wars are treated similarly. The reason for this is partly practical. There is not enough time to do justice to these huge conflicts in addition to all the imperial conflicts. But there is also a political dimension to this decision which revolves around foreign policy aims. The British took very few colonies in Europe itself and those that it did were mainly for use as naval bases. Its foreign policy for Europe was generally to ensure that no single European power came to dominate the continent. It frequently joined alliances against the French in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Russians in the mid-nineteenth century and the Germans in the twentieth century. Its armed forces were frequently called upon to serve on the continent, but it did not become involved in settlement or colonisation after the conflicts had been resolved. Europe was densely populated, it had a reasonably high technology level and the peoples there were becoming increasingly conscious of their nationalist and linguistic groupings. Besides, the fact that Britain was an island and that it had a large and powerful navy meant that it could afford to pick and choose its level of involvement and commitment on the continent and so it could turn its attention to maritime and non-European trade and opportunities instead. I have therefore concluded that it is best for me to avoid continental wars, battles and politics.

What is a Colony?

Imperial Institute
This is not as easy a question as you might expect. They were basically units of overseas territory controlled by the British Government or organisations (or even individuals) coming from Britain. There is a full list of these colonies on the Entering and Exiting the Empire page. It also explains the basic classifications of territories – although there were many exceptions.
Company Rule – these were when private companies – capitalised from Britain – tried to set up their own colonies as private commercial concerns. They frequently found the administration far more expensive than they expected and so often turned to the British government for help – particularly when wars or rebellions occurred.

Colonies were those areas directly ruled by a governor on behalf of the British government and representing the Crown. The governor was responsible to the Colonial Office in London, although he usually had wide powers of discretion. These were the most common form of imperial control.

Protectorates were territories where the local rulers could continue ruling domestically but they had ceded the foreign and defence aspects of their government to the British. In return, the British respected and were prepared to defend the ruler from foreign or internal threats.

Dominions were those colonies that were granted significant freedom to rule themselves. The settler colonies were afforded this freedom. Dominions were fully independent countries after the 1931 Statute of Westminster, although their Head of State continued to be the British sovereign.

Mandates were set up after World War One as German and Turkish colonies were passed to Britain and France to prepare for self government on behalf of the League of Nations. After World War Two, the United Nations issued further mandates.

In addition to these five kinds of ‘colony’ there were colonies set up by individuals, missionaries and even – in the case of Pitcairn Island by escaped mutineers! Of course these are the areas that had some measure of formal control. In many ways, British naval, industrial and commercial supremacy was so great that it effectively held sway over an equally impressive ‘informal empire’. The best example of this was South America where the Royal Navy was happy to uphold the US so-called ‘Monroe Doctrine’ as it suited British commercial and strategic concerns at very little cost to the taxpayer. In many ways, formal control was often extended when informal relationships collapsed or were challenged by other European rivals.

How Big was the British Empire?
Of course, the British Empire expanded and contracted wildly over the years. It became fairly large with the ever expanding American colonies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, particularly after the defeat of the French in the Seven Years War. The American Revolution lost much (but not all) of this territory, but the expansion of British interests in India filled this vacuum. It really was the victory in the Napoleonic Wars that allowed the British to hoover up naval bases and toe holds across the world. These would generally provide the jumping off points for the massive expansion in the Victorian period. Advances in medicine and communications helped open up the last continent of Africa to European Imperialism in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century.
World War One appeared to add yet more colonies to the British Empire in the form of mandates. I have created a list of the populations and sizes of the colonies in 1924 a territorial highpoint of Empire – although economically the Empire would begin to enter its period of decline in this Inter-war years period. But it was still estimated at this time to cover between a quarter and a third of the globe and that it represented an area of over one hundred and fifty times the size of Great Britain itself.

The Second World War would see much imperial territory threatened or temporarily lost. Despite being on the winning side, the Empire would not recover from the geo-political shifts caused by this Second World War and would enter into a period of terminal decline. India was the first and largest area to be shed and then the Middle East and then Africa. Various Caribbean and Pacific possessions held on a little longer but most of these also went their seperate way. The last of the major colonies to be lost was that of Hong Kong in 1997.

Theories of Empire
Historians have long debated how and why the British were able to amass such a formidable and expansive empire in the years since 1497. And why were the British able to supplant the Portugese, Dutch and Spanish Empires in the Seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries and effectively see off French, Russian and German challenges over the nineteenth and early twentieth Centuries? These debates still rage and there is no definitive answer. For students, I have put a wider range of factors on the Student Zone brainstorm boards but some of the more commonly stated reasons are explained below.
Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation

This was a popular combination of factors given for the rise of the British Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth Centuries. The Protestant aspect of Christianity was seen by many within the British Empire as part of the larger battle with the more ‘Catholic’ nations of Continental Europe. Ever since the Reformation, religion represented not merely a spiritual difference between the Catholic and Protestant churches but was part of a far larger cultural and political competition between deadly rivals. Portugal, Spain and France were the Catholic nations who developed successful commercial empires before the English (and Dutch) were able to do so. Religion gave an excuse for this commercial rivalry to turn into military and political competition. The very success of the Protestant nations in challenging the Catholic hegemony in the New World and the East Indies seemed to confirm that God might be on the Protestants’ side after all – although this did ignore the fact that the English and Dutch co-religionists were just as frequently found at the throats of one another.

It was certainly helpful that the Protestant work ethic meant that Christian and commercial ideals could be reconciled fairly easily and in fact was thought to manifest itself in the improvement and development of British civilisation in general. In pre-industrial Britain, the combination of the these three factors would lead to the creation of the settler colonies in North America. Devout Christians would look for economic freedom from feudal relationships in this New World. However, mercantalism and then the industrial revolution meant that this commercial aspect could take on a more sinister role as monopoly power, slavery or exploitative working conditions became a temptation hard for investors or capitalists to resist. It was reassuring to many such capitalists that they could hide behind the idea that by investing in enterprises and schemes around the world that they were serving a modernising and civilising goal and so their consciences could be clear in such a noble enterprise.

The civilisation aspiration could be damaging in its own right. It assumed that British civilisation was innately superior to those it was subjagating. Indeed, the very subjagation process confirmed the superiority of British Civilisation! It then assumed that the new rulers were obliged to improve the subjugated peoples that it had taken under its wing with large doses of Christianity and commerce. Of course, this appealed to the positive aspirations that many Imperialists held for the future of a benign Empire. It offered a justification for Imperialism. However, it could also justify some of the more extreme Social Darwinist ideas of racial superiority and it allowed for treating the subject peoples as innately inferior.

In summary, Christianity, commerce and civilisation was a neat way to justify the uniqueness of the British Empire and yet give it a justification for continuing into the future. It could also be deeply patronising and justified cultural imperialism and racial stereotyping and yet there was a surprisingly large strain of truth behind this reason for the British strain of imperialism.

Mercantilism

East Indiamen, 1685
Mercantilism and Chartered Monopoly Companies were becoming quite the fashion in the late Sixteenth and Seventeenth century (and would live on to the nineteenth in some cases. It was a cheap and relatively easy way for a Feudal Monarch to gain an income on the back of his nation’s prestige and maritime exploits. He (or she) could give permission to explorers to claim lands on his behalf and then authorise certain companies (with the aid of Charters) to exploit the natural resources in that part of the world in return for a fixed income to the Monarch. In many ways it was something for nothing for the ruler. He could provide exclusive (monopoly) rights to certain cronies in return for money, political support or promotion at home. It invariably, but not always, resulted in ignoring the rights of any indigenous or local peoples that were ‘in the way’. If the political entity was too large and powerful then alliances might be entered into or the Monarch might lend the Company the support of his nation’s military wings. The Spanish and Portugese long used this system of government, and the French and Dutch followed suit. It was to be no surprise that England (then Britain) would also follow this model – at least for a while. The Stuart Monarchs were particularly keen on this economic model – especially as it seemed to provide the permanently cash-strapped Stuarts with much needed money. Over time though, problems did arise. Companies were often more interested in making a profit than in taking care of the people it ruled over. When rebellions or riots broke out, it was invariably the government who had to come to the rescue as the company’s resources would be quickly depleted by long, drawn out and expensive campaigns. The famous ‘East India Company’ had to go cap in hand to the British Government to save it from bankruptcy but not before many individual investors and directors had made fortunes. They would sell their shares when it looked like trouble was looming – it was the small or institutional shareholders who invariably got caught out – or the British taxpayer!

Slavery would show just how exploitative and morally bankrupt this system could descent to. Plantations needed labour and labour was available, relatively cheaply, in West Africa. It was when slaves started revolting and rising up in rebellions that questions were asked back in Britain – why precisely was the government spending money and resources supporting slave owners against slaves? They had not shared the profits in the ‘good’ years, why should British taxpayers support them now that they were suffering. Surely it was there own problem.

Technological and Industrial Superiority

The British had no monopoly on technological innovation. Gunpowder, the printing press, navigational equipment were all developed and improved on the continent or further afield yet. Europe from the Fifteenth century onwards was becoming a dynamic place where new ideas were swirling around with unnatural haste. Britain was benefitting from this much wider European Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment and yet it was also in a position to take these ideas, and many others, much further as it would become the first nation to harness the power of steam which in turn would unleash an Industrial Revolution and an avalanche of high quality, mass-produced goods that would flood the markets around the world. They, in turn, would provide a technology gap that non-European nations would find difficult to compete with. Precision-made muskets, rifles, machine guns, train locomotives, steam ships would provide the relatively small and outstretched British armed forces with unparalleled advantages. They could take on vastly larger (and possibly braver) enemies and yet beat them off, subdue and suppress them. British weaponry was very effective and its communication systems allowed it to shepherd its meagre resources to devastating effect and even its medical resources would improve enough to allow its soldiers and sailors to penetrate deeper and more inaccessible areas. Britain was not the only nation to enjoy a technological advantage over non-European nations, but its combination of industrial might and maritime power meant that it had a peculiar advantage and one that would not be challenged until the development of guerilla warfare and tactics in the twentieth century.

Strategic Imperatives

Sir John Seeley once stated that the British Empire was acquired in a ‘fit of absent-mindedness’. What he meant by this was that the Empire was acquired for a variety of reasons that did not add up to a coherent whole. He also had in mind the fact that new colonies were being added in order to defend existing colonies and borders. The best example of this might be the colony of India. It was certainly regarded as the Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire but it also meant that a surprising number of supporting colonies would be added to guard the so-called Jewel itself or the routes to and from the Jewel. For example, the British were keen to take control of the Cape Colony from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars to secure the main sea route to India. Likewise, islands like St. Helena, Mauritius and the coastline of Aden were all added for similar reasons. Of course, when the Suez Canal was opened in the 1869, it was not long before the British took a controlling interest in the Suez Canal Company and soon became involved in controlling the Egyptian administration itself. Then, once Egypt was a colony, Sudan and Cyprus became part of the Empire. Even within India itself, British control was expanded from coastal factories to dominate the interior and then becoming involved in acquiring the Himalaya region to defend the approaches to India. There was a relentless logic to guarding the next valley, river or island that soon got the British involved in places that had little strategic importance except to the colonies that it already controlled.

Maritime Advantages

The Royal Navy would undoubtedly become a formidable military institution, but it was not always inevitable that Britannia would rule the waves. Naturally, being an island nation, shipbuilding and sailing would be important skills and industries to a country like England. But, Portugal and then Spain had got off to a far more promising maritime domination of the seas from the fifteenth century onwards. They had come to understand the ship design, navigational and long distance skills required to explore and commercially exploit the routes that they discovered. The English were always playing catch up or were merely picking up the scraps left by the Portugese and Spanish. If anything, it was the Dutch and French who first challenged Portugese and Spanish control of the seas. This situation would not really be transformed until the eighteenth century. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 where the Dutch King William of Orange took control of the English Crown would reduce, but not remove, Anglo-Dutch rivalry but it would not be until the Seven Years War of 1756 to 1763 that the Royal Navy would be able to take on the far richer and supposedly more powerful Kingdom of France. Ironically, this was also due to the Glorious Revolution in that the Dutch brought sophisticated banking techniques (including the formation of the Bank of England) that would allow the British to borrow money to build a huge Navy with the idea of paying back the loans once Britain had been victorious. The French Navy had no such infusion of investment and so were hard pressed to see off the challenge from the Royal Navy especially on the global scale of what was really the first ‘World War’ in that it stretched over all corners of the globe. In some ways, the French were able to get some revenge by helping the American Revolutionaries in the 1770s and 1780s in their humiliation of the British. But this in itself would be a false dawn for the French Monarchy. They had invested huge quantities of money to challenge the Royal Navy (and help the Americans to win the Revolutionary War) but without the benefit of receiving tangible assets to recoup this investment. It is not an understatement to say that one of the prime reasons for France’s own Revolution was because their cupboard was bare after helping the American Revolutionaries. This of course would lead indirectly to the Napoleonic struggles between France and Britain. Napoleon would concentrate on his land campaigns, but he would be constantly frustrated or harrassed by the Royal Navy. For example, Nelson destroyed Napoleon’s fleet at anchor off Egypt in 1798 which killed off his Pyramid Campaign. Napoleon would try to combine the French and Spanish fleets to lure the Royal Navy across the Atlantic to allow him to launch an invasion force against England. The resulting battle of Trafalgar in 1805 would become the defining naval battle for the next century. The British did not fall for the lure and ended up blockading the French and Spanish fleets instead. Once these fleets set sail, Nelson directed an aggressive assault that would destroy the them and leave the Royal Navy ruling the waves until World War One and beyond. For the rest of the nineteenth century, there was no maritime power who could come close to challenging British domination of the maritime communication and trade routes. This meant that the British could hoover up all the outlying French, Spanish and Dutch colonies in the remainder of the Napoleonic Wars and could then guarantee the safety of all of these isolated outposts from at least maritime threats. Britannia really would rule the waves and this undoubtedly made imperialism easier to implement.

Marxist/Leninist Stages of Development

One interesting theory to explain Imperialism was borne out of the works of Karl Marx. In fact, it is more due to Lenin’s adaptations to Marx’s writings that colonialism was brought into the fold, but it relied on the historical determinism put forward by Marx. Basically, he believed that human societies were travelling through economic stages of development before reaching the Communist Utopia where all are treated equally and all goods are distributed equitably. Feudalism was a pre-condition for Capitalism which in turn was a pre-condition for Communism. It was argued that Capitalism had the seeds of destruction within itself – capitalists would compete with one another as they strived to make more and more profit – but they would be reduced in number but becoming more efficient simultaneously. Eventually, it would be so efficient that it would produce all the worldly goods that consumers would desire, but there would be so few capitalists left that the wage slave workers (who were becoming more and more exploited) would rise up and seize the factories and the means of production. It was Lenin who had to adapt this theory to why a revolution might take place in relatively non-capitalist Tsarist Russia which was barely moving out of the Feudal phase. He basically added another layer of inevitability to explain that capitalist Europe was competing for the raw materials and markets that colonies could provide. It was this, he explained, that would result in the outbreak of World War One, as European nations desperately competed with one another for colonies and once these ran out, would fight one another for domination – bringing the day forward for the ‘real’ Communist Revolution. He therefore advocated staying neutral in the Capitalist war but was not averse to taking the opportunity to seize power in October, 1917 as Russia was worn out by the long drawn out attritional, total war.

Communism was an easy ideology to sell to poor, exploited and oppressed peoples around the World, Communist organisations and groups therefore became major resisters and opponents to Imperial regimes the World over – especially when they became tied to Cold War politics. Unfortunately, when agricultural or primary resource colonies gained their freedoms with the promises of a Communist Utopia to fulfill it did not take long for disappointment, cronyism and corruption to undermine and discredit Communism as a viable form of government. It may have given some people inspiration to remove their imperial overlords, it just could not deliver on its promises.

Combination of Factors

Of course, there is rarely a single answer to the complicated realities of politics, economics and military rivalry. There is probably no single reason to explain how Britain created such a vast institution. Various isolated reasons, advantages and localised situations would combine to create a series of justifications for seizing isolated colonies that combined to form the huge and expansive British Empire.

How is the Site Organised?
A site this large is going to have to be broken up into manageable chunks and sections. I have tried very hard to anticipate the sections and areas of interest that might be needed to try and explain the many Imperial experiences. I have generally come up with a series of major sections which are laid out alphabetically on the right hand side of this page. Additionally, you can get to the sections from from the menus on the bottom of each page. If you cannot find your way through this navigation system, then try using the Search function.
How Should you Credit Information from the Site?
My name is Stephen Luscombe. By profession, I am a teacher and so I am very happy for any material on this site to be used for educational, non-profit purposes. I would of course appreciate crediting the fact that you found the information on britishempire.co.uk preferably with a link to the page that it came from. If you need to supply a date, the site has been in a constant state of upgrading and updating since it was started in 1996. If you have any specific requests or need further clarification then do not hesitate to contact me by email.