The British Empire comprised 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 in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and colonisation attempts by Scotland during the 17th century. At its height in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913 the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, of the world population at the time,; and by 1920 it covered , of the Earth's total land area. The British Parliament was the supreme law-making authority for all the British possessions which made up the Empire.Halsbury (ed.), The Laws of England, 1st ed., vol. XXI, paras. 1065, 1067 (London: Butterworth & Co., 1912). As a result, its constitutional, legal, linguistic, and cultural legacy is widespread. 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 world, and in the process established large overseas empires. Motivated by the great wealth these empires generated, England, France, and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks in the Americas and Asia. A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left Britain the dominant colonial power in North America. Britain became a major power in the Indian subcontinent after the East India Company's conquest of Mughal Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.
The American Revolution resulted in Britain losing some of its oldest and most populous colonies in North America by 1783. While retaining control of British North America (now Canada) and territories in and near the Caribbean in the British West Indies, British colonial expansion 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. It pursued trade concessions in China and Japan, and territory in Southeast Asia. The Great Game and Scramble for Africa also ensued. The period of relative peace (1815–1914) during which the British Empire became the global hegemon was later described as (Latin for "British Peace"). It also colonised India by defeating the last major imperial dynasty Maratha Empire by 1818 in the Third Anglo-Maratha War. Alongside the formal control that Britain exerted over its colonies, its dominance of much of world trade, and of its oceans, meant that it effectively controlled the economies of, and readily enforced its interests in, many regions, such as Asia and Latin America.; . It also came to dominate the Middle East, shaping its modern borders alongside France. Increasing degrees of autonomy were recognised for its white settler colonies, some of which were formally reclassified as dominions by the 1920s. By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britain's economic lead. Military, economic and colonial 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 the First World War, Britain was no longer the world's preeminent 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 and the British economy helped accelerate the decline of the empire. India, Britain's most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence in 1947 as part of a larger decolonisation movement, in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire. The Suez Crisis of 1956 confirmed Britain's decline as a global power, and the handover of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 symbolised for many the end of the British Empire,; . though fourteen overseas territories that are remnants of the empire remain under British sovereignty. After independence many former British colonies, along with most of the dominions, joined the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states. Fifteen of these, including the United Kingdom, retain the same person as monarch, currently .
Origins (1497–1583)
The foundations of the overseas British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms, and, at the time ruled by different monarchs. 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 Northwest Passage 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 did not return; it is unknown what happened to his ships. There is "inferential evidence [that] suggests that Bristol mariners may already have known of that North American shore and had been harvesting its rich seas for a decade or more", but England made no formal claims.Meining, D.W. The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, Vol. 1, Atlantic America, 1492–1800. New Haven: Yale University Press 1986, 24–25
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, Henry VIII's 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 carried out its first modern colonisation, in sixteenth-century Ireland, with settlements, known as "plantations", of English and Welsh Protestants. England had already colonised part of the country following the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169,; . but English authority had waned over the centuries. During the reign of Elizabeth I, a pattern of conquest and attempts at colonisation was "contemporaneous with and parallel to the first effective of Englishmen in North America".Canny, Nicholas P. "The Ideology of English Colonization From Ireland to America". The William and Mary Quarterly. Oct. 1973. Vol. 30. No. 4, p. 575 Several men who helped establish the Munster plantations in Ireland later played a part in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country Men.
English overseas possessions (1583–1707)
In 1578 Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration.; That year Gilbert sailed for the Caribbean with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic.; . In 1583 he embarked on a second attempt. On this occasion, he formally claimed the harbour of the island of Newfoundland, although no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England and was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584. Later that year, Raleigh founded the Roanoke Colony on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.
From 1585 to 1603 England fully conquered IrelandFarrell, Gerard (10 October 2017). "The 'Mere Irish' and the Colonisation of Ulster, 1570–1641." Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-59363-0. and challenged the naval dominance of Spain in the Anglo-Spanish War, with their war ending in a draw.
In 1603 James VI of Scotland ascended (as James I) to the English throne and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations' colonial infrastructures to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies. The British Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of joint-stock companies, most notably the East India Company, to administer colonies and overseas trade. This period, until the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after the American War of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has been referred to by some historians as the "First British Empire".
Americas, Africa and the slave trade
England's early efforts at colonisation in the Americas met with mixed success. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits. Colonies on the Caribbean islands of St Lucia (1605) and Grenada (1609) rapidly folded. The first permanent English settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown by Captain John Smith, and managed by the Virginia Company; the Crown took direct control of the venture in 1624, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia. Bermuda was settled and claimed by England as a result of the 1609 shipwreck of the Virginia Company's flagship, while attempts to settle Newfoundland were largely unsuccessful. In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven by Puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims. Fleeing religious persecution became a major motive for many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland was established by English Roman Catholics (1634), Rhode Island (1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions and Connecticut (1639) for Congregationalists. England's North American holdings were further expanded by the annexation of the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1664, following the capture of New Amsterdam, which was renamed New York. Although less financially successful than colonies in the Caribbean, these territories had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far greater numbers of English emigrants, who preferred their temperate climates.