How the British Empire Became the Biggest in the World

If you were to look at Britain on a map today, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s borders only encompass those of the British Isles.

But if you look at the world as a whole, you will find that there are actually 14 overseas territories where the British government still holds power. From Gibraltar at the entrance of the Mediterranean, to the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, these are the last remaining possessions of Britain’s once mighty empire.

At the height of it’s territorial control, a little over 100 years ago, the British Empire covered one quarter of the globes land mass and ruled almost a third of the world’s population. It was ‘the empire on which the sun never set’.

But how did such a small island nation become the largest and most powerful empire the world has ever seen? This is the history of the British Empire.

The foundations of the British Empire were laid long before the state of Britain even formally existed. The dominant power in the British Isles throughout much of it’s history, has been the Kingdom of England. With a well-developed economy, and military force to match, England during the medieval and early modern periods came to rule over the smaller, independent kingdoms in Wales and parts of Ireland. Although, to the North, the Kingdom of Scotland remained a fiercely proud and independent nation, who had bitterly and successfully resisted frequent invasions from it’s powerful southern neighbour.

By the early 17^th century, Elizabeth I of England, had issued several trading and exploration commissions to English adventurers, with the intention of exploring and colonising new territories yet to be claimed by other European powers. The likes of Sir Francis Drake and Sir Martin Frobisher claimed many lands in the name of England, but these were not followed up with settlements. The first English colony established in North America, at Roanoke Island in 1585, failed dramatically with the colonists mysteriously disappearing, never to be seen or heard from again.

Elizabeth also granted several royal charters to joint stock companies, who were established specifically for the purpose of developing overseas trade. Companies such as the Levant Company, founded in 1592, and the East India Company, founded in 1600, were granted monopolies on all English trade to and from these areas.

When Elizabeth I died in 1603, the throne of England passed to James VI of Scotland. Upon his ascension to the throne, James became the King of both Scotland and England through the Union of the Crowns, however, the two kingdoms remained distinct and were ruled separately. As King,  James looked to build further on the attempts of his predecessor to establish overseas colonies, that were to be ruled and governed under one of the three types of colony structures:

A crown colony, was directly ruled by the Monarch themselves but would typically be administered by a royally appointed Governor and supported by a local council. 

A charter colony, was similar to a crown colony but was ruled under a corporate charter, rather than a governor. These charter colonies often granted colonists significantly more political liberty compared to other colonies.

A proprietary colony, was governed by an individual who was typically the head of a joint stock company. These colonies were distinct from Crown colonies in that they were commercial enterprises with responsibilities to shareholders. Proprietary governors typically did not live in the colony and so appointed local governors and councils to rule in their absence. Over time however, these proprietary colonies became increasingly difficult to manage and transitioned to crown colonies instead.

An important yet often overlooked development in England’s overseas expansion, is that of the Plantation of Ulster, which saw Protestant settlers from Scotland and England transported to parts of the North of Ireland during the early years of King James’s reign. This model of organised colonisation would form the blueprint for future English colonial expansion, with many of the leaders of the Ulster Plantation later becoming involved in establishing other colonies in the New World.

Throughout the 1600’s, the Kingdom of England expanded it’s overseas colonies in North America and the Caribbean. Some were entirely new ventures, whereas others were annexed from rival foreign powers, like New York which was seized from the Dutch in 1665. England also significantly developed it’s trading networks in Africa and the East Indies, with the building of factories and fortified trading posts. A critical component to this mercantile success was the creation of the Royal African Company in 1660, who over the subsequent decades would become the leading participant in the brutal yet highly lucrative transatlantic slave trade.

During this period, Scotland also began to establish overseas colonies of its own, having looked on somewhat enviously at the successful endeavours of the English. Unfortunately, almost all these attempts ended in failure, with colonies in Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and Carolina barely lasting a few years.

The most abject failure of Scotland’s colonisation attempts however, came in 1698, with the Darien Scheme. This aimed to establish a colony controlling the overland trade route of the isthmus of Panama, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. To finance the expedition, an immense amount of capital was raised from the public, which accounted for almost a fifth of the wealth in Scotland at that time. When the ships arrived at the coast of Darien, they named the colony Caledonia and set about constructing a settlement called New Edinburgh. The attempts of the colonists however were to ultimately prove futile, as the settlement quickly succumbed to food shortages, tropical disease and attacks from nearby Spanish forces. Despite a re-supply in 1699, the settlement was abandoned and the survivors who totalled just a few hundred of the original two and a half thousand, returned to Scotland in disgrace.

Due to the total disaster of the Darien Scheme and the loss of public money that had been invested into it, Scotland was plunged into a financial crisis. Many then considered that their best and only chance of being part of a major power, would be to share in the benefits of England's colonial enterprise.

By the turn of the 18^th century, England and Scotland remained independent kingdoms, although, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had dramatically shifted the political landscape within the British Isles. The Catholic James II was deposed and replaced with his Protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband William, who became King William III of England and Scotland. Legislation was passed in England so that only Protestants could inherit the throne but this law did not apply in Scotland and so, under the reign of Queen Anne in the early 1700’s, efforts were made to unite the parliaments of both nations and secure a Protestant line of succession for the Monarchy.   

When The Acts of Union were passed in 1707, England and Scotland were then united into one Kingdom under the name of Great Britain. Over the following decades, Britain became involved in several wars with other European powers which were fought not only on the continent but also wherever their overseas colonial interests lay. After the War of the Spanish Succession concluded in 1714 with a victory for Britain and her allies, peace negotiations granted territorial concessions from the defeated French and Spanish, with Newfoundland and Acadia in North America passing into British control, as well as the strategic Mediterranean islands of Gibraltar and Menorca.

Meanwhile, the British East India Company, which was not technically part of the Empire but nevertheless still pursued it’s colonial interests, was engaged in military operations against it’s French counterpart across the sub-continent. The aftermath of the Battle of Plassey in 1757 wrestled control of Bengal away from the local Nawab ruler and his French allies, leaving the British to become the leading military and political power in the region. This acted as a springboard for the British East India Company to expand its territory further in later years, either assuming direct rule themselves or via local rulers, who were threatened with force from the companies private armies.

Further conflicts of the 18^th century, namely, the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War in particular, gifted Britain even further territorial concessions at the expense of her rivals. In North America, the British captured Quebec in 1759 and effectively ended French colonial efforts on the continent with the annexation of New France by 1760. Florida passed into British control from Spain, leaving virtually the entire eastern seaboard of North America in British hands. The Treaty of Paris which ended the Seven Years War in 1763 also ceded the Caribbean Islands of Dominica, Grenada, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, as well as Tobago to Britain, which was now the most dominant colonial and maritime power of the age.

Throughout it’s history, the British Empire would be powered by two components that went hand in hand with one another. Firstly, mastery of the high seas through naval supremacy and secondly, indominable mercantile trade, that was free from foreign aggression. This exponential increase in trade gained immense wealth for Britain, through the taxation of goods that passed through it’s ports. However, the issue of taxation itself, would soon lead to revolution and the first major colonial loss for the Empire.

Although Britain considered it’s colonies to be sovereign territory, it did not afford them the same rights and privileges which were enjoyed on the British mainland. Throughout the 1760’s and 1770’s, relations between Britain and it’s Thirteen Colonies in America became increasingly strained due to parliament taxing the colonies without their consent or representation. Many within the Thirteen Colonies considered this a breach of their rights as Englishmen and formally renounced the authority of parliament in 1775, resulting in the outbreak of revolution. Britain sent troops to quell the rebelling colonists but in the following year of 1776, the leading political figures of the colonies assembled to form the Second Continental Congress and declared their independence from Britain. After a protracted war of 8 years, Britain’s military forces in the colonies were finally defeated and the United States of America was recognised as an independent nation.

The loss of America marked a sea change for the British Empire. After this, British colonial efforts shifted towards Asia, the Pacific and Africa, where explorers had chartered many new lands yet to be colonised by Europeans. One such explorer was Captain James Cook, who mapped and claimed much of the Pacific Ocean, including New Zealand and the Eastern coast of Australia in the name of Britain. Although Cook was killed on the Island of Hawaii during his Third Voyage, the discoveries he made during the 1770’s would be instrumental to the further expansion of the Empire.

Australia was to serve as a penal settlement for British convicts, who would otherwise have been transported to the Thirteen Colonies before they were lost. The first shipment of convicts arrived in the colony of New South Wales in 1788 and this practice of sentencing criminals to transportation continued into the middle of the 19^th century.

Britain also expanded it’s colonial interests into the North Pacific. Explorers such as George Vancouver and Alexander Mackenzie surveyed the Western Coast of North America in the 1790’s, which subsequently opened up the territory to British mercantile interests, particularly that of the fur trade. In roads were also made into the vast interior of the Rocky Mountains which expanded British North America westwards.

War with France in 1803 would once again challenge Britain’s position as the dominant colonial power of the age, with the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte in the aftermath of the French Revolution. To protect itself and its colonies from invasion, Britain invested large sums of capital and resources into the war effort, with the Royal Navy blockading French ports and attacking French overseas possessions. A crucial victory was won at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 against the combined Franco-Spanish Navy, albeit at the loss of Britain’s Admiral Lord Nelson, who was killed in action. Victory at Trafalgar not only eliminated the threat of invasion for Britain but it also secured the uncontested supremacy of the Royal Navy for the next 140 years. By the time the Napoleonic Wars had drawn to a close in 1815, the victorious allied coalition of which Britain was a part of, secured further territory from the defeated French, Spanish and Dutch who had been part of Napoleon’s French Empire. The Ionian Islands, Malta, Mauritius, St Lucia, the Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Ceylon and the Cape Colony were added to Britain’s already substantial number of colonies.

Many of these Caribbean colonies contained countless plantations dedicated to the production of sugar cane, which over the centuries had become exclusively reliant on slave labour. Although Britain had already profited tremendously from the transatlantic slave trade, the advent of the industrial revolution shifted the focus of merchants and capitalists to produce goods at home in Britain, rather than relying on slave produced goods from the colonies. Additionally, growing political pressure from Abolitionist groups, eventually forced the hand of the British Government to abolish the slave trade within the Empire in 1807. It would be another 27 years however, before the institution of slavery itself would be formally abolished in 1834.

The period from 1815 - 1914 has often been described as Britain’s Imperial Century. After effectively seizing control over the Indian sub-continent, the British East India Company looked to expand it’s interests further across Asia. Singapore was founded as a trading post in 1819 and later incorporated as a colony in 1824. Whereas in China, the East India Company, alongside the British government, were able to seize control of Hong Kong and Shanghai in the aftermath of the First Opium War in 1842.

The East India Company’s control over India itself however, was challenged in 1857, when local troops rebelled against their British commanders. In what became known as the Sepoy Rebellion, the East India Company fought against troops previously under its command and re-took the territories that had been seized by the mutineers. After the hostilities ended the following year, the British government decided to dissolve the East India Company believing that it could no longer rule and administer the country effectively. India was then brought under direct British rule in 1858 and became the most valuable possession within the Empire, colloquially named as ‘the jewel in the Crown’.

An emerging threat to Britain’s imperial ambitions during the 19^th century came from the Russian Empire, which wished to expand it’s territorial possessions and sphere of influence into Central Asia and the Mediterranean, to fill the void of the collapsing Ottoman Empire. When Russia invaded the Ottoman controlled Balkans in 1853, Britain alongside France, entered the war in support of the Turks, fearing that Russia could threaten their colonial interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The resulting Crimean War of 1854 – 1856 was a resounding defeat for Russia and a confidence boost for the British who remained the dominant global imperial power. Although the situation between Britain and Russia in Central Asia remained uncertain, a partial settlement to the issue known as ‘the Great Game’ was reached in 1878, which established respective spheres of influence. The British also gained control of Cyprus from the Ottomans that year, as a surety it would be used to defend against any further Russian expansion.

The continent of Africa also witnessed a consolidation a British colonial power during the 19^th century. British emigration to the recently acquired Cape Colony began to increase in the 1820’s, which pushed out thousands of Dutch descended settlers, known as Boers, into the northern hinterland. Resentful of British rule, they established their own independent republics, namely the Transvaal and Orange Free State but these too eventually succumbed to British occupation, with the conclusion of the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1902.

Meanwhile in North Africa, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which linked the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean, proved of vital strategic importance for British trade routes. Although Britain could not take direct control the canal, it was able to militarily occupy Egypt in 1882 but did not consider it to be formally within the Empire. Further territorial expansion, in what became known as 'the Scramble for Africa’ in the late 19^th century, saw Britain gain control of much of the Eastern and Southern parts of the continent. Efforts were also made to build a continental railway from the ‘Cape to Cairo’, although this was never completed.

As the 20^th century dawned, Britain’s position as the leader in world trade and adoption of the role of global policeman, allowed it to also control the economies of nations who were not part of the British Empire, such as China, Argentina and Siam. An electrical telegraph network, known as the All Red Line, was completed in 1902 which allowed Britain to communicate directly with all of its overseas colonies across the Empire.

As Britain’s predominantly white colonies developed economically and socially, they sought to gain political independence from the mother country. Canada was formed into a confederation in 1867 and granted the right of full self-governance, with the exception to international relations. Australia and New Zealand followed similar paths in 1900, becoming newly created dominions of the Empire. Ireland also hoped to gain some form of independence from Britain during this time. Multiple Home Rule bills were put before the British parliament but these were all defeated on the grounds that partial Irish independence would pose a threat to the unity of the Empire.

The threat to the Empire however would ultimately come from Germany and the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. During the conflict, Britain relied heavily on the Empire for importing food, resources and crucially, military support. Over 2.5 million men from Britain’s dominions and colonies served in the First World War, with many from Canada, India, Australia and New Zealand making the ultimate sacrifice for King and Country. Britain was able to defeat Germany and it’s Ottoman allies in the war and annexed much of their territory in the Middle East, Africa and the Pacific. Victory however, came at a heavy price for Britain and signalled the beginning of the end for the Empire.

Although 1921 marked the peak of the British Empire’s territorial possessions, Ireland was granted independence that same year and soon other nations within the Empire began to question when they may become independent also. The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 put a temporary halt on this, as Britain once again turned to the Empire for economic, material and military support. Though ultimately victorious, Britain was bankrupted by the war and was no longer in a position to support it’s overstretched and questioning colonies.

Gradually, throughout the 1940’s, 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, the colonies and dominions of the Empire were granted their independence from Britain. In what was recognised as the ‘wind of change’ almost 400 years of British colonial history came to an end. Although, almost all these newly independent nations did not sever ties with Britain completely and agreed to join the political association named the Commonwealth, with 14 of these nations also retaining the British monarch as their respective head of state.

Perhaps what many see as the final and most symbolic representation of the end of the British Empire came in 1997, when Britain formally handed over Hong Kong to China. The legacy of the Empire however, remains with us to this this day, as the English language is the most widely spoken on earth and British culture, practices and customs remain universally popular. Modern Britain itself can even be seen as a microcosm of the Empire, with people of almost every race, nationality, religion and culture, that were once under British rule, now living on the very island that began the journey of Empire all those years ago.