British Empire Totally Explained

Everything about British Colony totally explained

The British Empire was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. It was a product of the European age of discovery, which began with the maritime explorations of the 15th century, that sparked the era of the European colonial empires. By 1921, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, approximately one-quarter of the world's population. It covered about 36.7 million km² (14.2 million square miles), about a quarter of Earth's total land area. As a result, its legacy is widespread, in legal and governmental systems, economic practice, militarily, educational systems, sports, and in the global spread of the English language. At the peak of its power, it was often said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous colonies or subject nations.
During the five decades following World War II, most of the territories of the Empire became independent. Many went on to join the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states.

Origins (1497–1583)

The foundations of the British Empire were laid at a time before the Kingdom of Great Britain existed as a single sovereign state, when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496 King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Portugal and Spain in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead a voyage to discover a route to Asia via the North Atlantic. Cabot sailed in 1497, and though he successfully made landfall on the coast of Canada (mistakenly believing, like Christopher Columbus five years earlier, that he'd reached Asia), no attempt at establishing a colony was made, and the voyage was unprofitable. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but nothing was heard from his ships again. In 1551, the Company of Merchant Adventurers, later renamed the Muscovy Company, was founded by Richard Chancellor and others, to open trade with Russia and probe the Northeast Passage to China.
Enmity and rivalry between Roman Catholic Spain and Protestant England during the Anglo-Spanish Wars led to the English Crown sanctioning English privateers such as John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake to engage in piratical attacks on 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, to rival those of Spain and Portugal. By this time, Spain was firmly entrenched in the Americas, Portugal had established a string of trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River, later to become New France.

Plantations of Ireland

Though a relative latecomer to overseas colonisation in comparison to Spain and Portugal, England had been engaged in a form of domestic colonisation in Ireland that had begun during Norman times and accelerated with the Tudor re-conquest of Ireland and Cromwellian conquest. The Plantations of Ireland, run by English colonists, were a precursor to the overseas Empire, and several people involved in these projects also had a hand in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the "West Country men", which included Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Richard Grenville and Sir Ralph Lane. After the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Irish Catholics were dispossessed of their land, and replaced with a Protestant landowning class from England and Scotland. The new Protestant ruling class was known as the Protestant Ascendancy. Catholics and, to a lesser extent, Presbyterians were discriminated against under the Penal Laws.

"First British Empire" (1583–1783)

In 1578 Sir Humphrey Gilbert was granted a patent by Queen Elizabeth I for discovery and overseas exploration, and set sail for the West Indies with the intention of first engaging in piracy and on the return voyage, establishing a colony in North America. The expedition failed at the outset due to bad weather. In 1583 Gilbert embarked on a second attempt, on this occasion to the island of Newfoundland where he formally claimed for England the harbour of St. John's, though no settlers were left behind to colonise it. Gilbert didn't 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, in the same year founding the colony of Roanoke on the coast of present-day North Carolina. The colony didn't survive due to lack of supplies.
In 1603, King James VI of Scotland ascended 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 infrastructure to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies. Although its beginnings were hit-and-miss, 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 a private company, the English East India Company, to trade with Asia. This period, until the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after the United States Declaration of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has subsequently been referred to as the "First British Empire".

The Americas

The Caribbean initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies, but not before several attempts at colonisation failed. 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 in St Lucia (1605) and Grenada (1609) also rapidly folded, but settlements were successfully established in St. Kitts (1624), Barbados (1627) and Nevis (1628). The colonies soon adopted the system of sugar plantations successfully used by the Portuguese in Brazil, which depended on slave labour, and—at first—Dutch ships, to sell the slaves and buy the sugar. To ensure the increasingly healthy profits of this trade remained in English hands, Parliament decreed in 1651 that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies. This led to hostilities with the United Dutch Provinces—a series of Anglo-Dutch Wars—which would eventually strengthen England's position in the Americas at the expense of the Dutch. In 1655 England annexed the island of Jamaica from the Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonising the Bahamas.
   England's first permanent overseas settlement was founded in 1607 in Jamestown, led by Captain John Smith and managed by the Virginia Company, an offshoot of which established a colony on Bermuda, which had been discovered in 1609. The Company's charter was revoked in 1624 and direct control was assumed by the crown, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia. The Newfoundland Company was created in 1610 with the aim of creating a permanent settlement on Newfoundland, but was largely unsuccessful. In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven for puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims. Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive of many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland was founded as a haven for Roman Catholics (1634), Rhode Island (1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions and Connecticut (1639) for congregationalists. The Province of Carolina was founded in 1663. In 1664, England gained control of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (renamed New York) via negotiations following the Second Anglo-Dutch War. In 1681, the colony of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn.

   In 1695 the Scottish parliament granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which proceeded in 1698 to establish a settlement on the isthmus of Panama, with a view to building a canal there. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, as well as by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland as a quarter of Scottish capital was lost in the enterprise. This episode is viewed as a major factor in persuading the Scottish Parliament to accept the terms of the Treaty of Union 1707 as the new Kingdom of Great Britain would take responsibility for some of Scotland's debts.
   The American colonies, which provided tobacco, cotton, and rice in the south and naval materiel and furs in the north, were less financially successful than those of the Caribbean, but had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far larger numbers of English emigrants who were also more favorable of temperate climates. The American Revolution resulted in de-facto self-government by 1775 for the Thirteen Colonies, which eventually declared their independence in 1776 to create the United States of America. The new nation was forced to defend that declaration against Britain in the American Revolutionary War, with victory on the battlefield resulting in recognition of independence in the Treaty of Paris (1783). In the end, this became the first successful colonial war of independence.
   From the outset, slavery was a vital economic component of the British Empire in the Americas. Until the abolition of the slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic. To facilitate this trade, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population comprising blacks rose from 25% in 1650 to around 80% in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10% to 40% over the same period (the majority in the south). For the slave traders, the trade was extremely profitable, and became a major economic mainstay for such western British cities as Bristol and Liverpool, which formed the third corner of the so-called triangular trade with Africa and the Americas. However, for the transportees, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average mortality rate during the middle passage was one in seven. The profits of the slave trade and of West Indian plantations amounted to 5% of the British economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution.

Asia

At the end of the 16th century, England and the Netherlands began to challenge Portugal's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages—the English (later British) and Dutch East India Companies, chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. The primary aim of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, and they focused their efforts on the source, the Indonesian archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India. The close proximity of London and Amsterdam across the North Sea and intense rivalry between England and the Netherlands inevitably led to conflict between the two companies, with the Dutch gaining the upper hand in the Moluccas (previously a Portuguese stronghold) after the withdrawal of the English in 1622, and the English enjoying more success in India, at Surat, after the establishment of a factory in 1613. Though England would ultimately eclipse the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands's more advanced financial system and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left it with a stronger position in Asia. Hostilities ceased after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Dutch William of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Netherlands and England. A deal between the two nations left the spice trade of the Indonesian archipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability, and by 1720, in terms of sales, the English company had overtaken the Dutch. which had granted the Company trading rights in 1617. Company interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the Mughal Empire declined in power and the British East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the La Compagnie française des Indes orientales, during the Carnatic Wars in southeastern India in the 1740s and 1750s. The Battle of Plassey, which saw the British, led by Robert Clive, defeat the French and their Indian allies, left the Company in control of Bengal and a major military and political power in India. In the following decades it gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or indirectly via local puppet rulers under the threat of force of the Indian Army, 80% of which was composed of native Indian sepoys.

Global struggles with France

Peace between England and the Netherlands in 1688 meant that the two countries entered the Nine Years' War as allies, but the conflict—waged in Europe and overseas between France, Spain and the Anglo-Dutch alliance—left the English a stronger colonial power than the Dutch, who were forced to devote a larger proportion of their military budget on the costly land war in Europe. The 18th century would see England (after 1707, Britain) rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, and France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage.
The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philippe of Anjou, a grandson of the King of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for Britain and the other powers of Europe. In 1701, Britain, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession. The conflict, which France and Spain were to lose, lasted until 1714. At the concluding peace Treaty of Utrecht, Philip renounced his and his descendents' right to the French throne. Spain lost its empire in Europe, and though it kept its empire in the Americas and the Philippines, it was irreversibly weakened as a power. The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain, Gibraltar and Minorca. Gibraltar, which is still a British overseas territory to this day, became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean. Minorca was returned to Spain at the Treaty of Amiens in 1802, after changing hands twice. Spain also ceded the rights to the lucrative asiento (permission to sell slaves in Spanish America) to Britain.
The Seven Years' War, which began in 1756, was the first war waged on a global scale, fought in Europe, India, North America, the Caribbean, the Philippines and coastal Africa. The signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763) had important consequences for Britain and its empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power there was effectively ended with the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. In India, the Carnatic War had left France still in control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, effectively leaving the future of India to Britain. The British victory over France in the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's dominant colonial power.

Rise of the "Second British Empire" (1783–1815)

Loss of the Thirteen Colonies

During the 1760s and 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament's attempts to govern and tax American colonists without their consent, summarised at the time by the slogan "No taxation without representation". Disagreement over the American colonist's guaranteed Rights as Englishmen turned to violence and, in 1775, the American Revolutionary War began. The following year, the colonists declared the independence of the United States and, with economic and naval assistance from France, would go on to win the war in 1783.
The loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by historians as the event defining the transition between the "first" and "second" empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 confirmed Smith's view that political control wasn't necessary for economic success.
Events in America influenced British policy in Canada, which had seen a large influx of loyalists during the Revolutionary War. The Constitutional Act of 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English-speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the two communities, and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Britain, with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution. The future of British North America was briefly threatened during the War of 1812 resulting in large part from British attempts to forcibly control Atlantic trade during the Napoleonic Wars, and in which the United States unsuccessfully took the opportunity to extend its border northwards. This was the last time that Britain and America went to war. The last major territorial dispute between the two countries, the Oregon boundary dispute, was settled peacefully in 1846.

Convicts and Empire

Since 1718, transportation to the American colonies had been a penalty for various criminal offences in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year across the Atlantic. Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government turned to the newly discovered land of New South Wales, later shown to be a single land mass with New Holland, discovered in 1606 by the Dutch but never colonized, and again later altogether renamed Australia.
In 1770 James Cook had discovered the eastern coast of Australia whilst on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific and named it New South Wales. In 1778 Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788. Matthew Flinders proved New Holland and New South Wales to be a single land mass by completing a circumnavigation of it in 1803. In 1826, Australia was formally claimed for the United Kingdom with the establishment of a military base, soon followed by a colony in 1829. The colonies later became self-governing colonies and became profitable exporters of wool and gold.

Abolition of slavery

Under increasing pressure from the abolitionist movement, the United Kingdom outlawed the slave trade (1807) and soon began enforcing this principle on other nations. By the mid-19th century the United Kingdom had largely eradicated the world slave trade. An act making not just the slave trade but slavery itself illegal was passed in 1833 and became law on August 1, 1834.

War with Napoleonic France

Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations. It wasn't only Britain's position on the world stage that was threatened: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, like his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe. The Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones in which Britain invested large amounts of capital and resources to win. French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy, which won a decisive victory over the French fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. Overseas colonies were attacked and occupied, including those of the Netherlands, which was annexed by Napoleon in 1810. France was finally defeated by a coalition of European armies in 1815. Britain and its empire were again the beneficiaries of peace treaties: France ceded the Ionian Islands (including Corfu) and Malta (which it had occupied in 1797 and 1798 respectively), St Lucia and Mauritius; Spain ceded Trinidad and Tobago; the Netherlands Guyana and the Cape Colony. Britain returned Guadeloupe and Réunion to France, and Java and Surinam to the Netherlands.

The imperial century (1815–1914)

Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial century" by some historians, around 10 million square miles of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire. Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in central Asia and, unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the Pax Britannica. Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many nominally independent countries, such as in Latin America, China and Siam, which has been characterised by some historians as an "informal empire".

Asia

Until its dissolution in 1858, the East India Company was key in the expansion of the British Empire in Asia. The Company's Army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to cooperate in arenas outside of India: the eviction of Napoleon from Egypt (1799), the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824) and the defeat of Burma (1826).
   The United Kingdom's 1882 military occupation of Egypt (itself triggered by concern over the Suez Canal) contributed to a preoccupation over securing control of the Nile valley, leading to the conquest of the neighbouring Sudan in 1896–98 and confrontation with a French military expedition at Fashoda (September 1898).
   In 1902 the United Kingdom completed its military occupation of the Transvaal and Free State by concluding a treaty with the two Boer Republics following the Second Boer War 1899-1902. The four colonies of Natal, Transvaal, Free State and Cape Province later merged in 1910 to form the Union of South Africa. Cecil Rhodes was the pioneer of British expansion north into Africa with his privately owned British South Africa Company. Rhodes expanded into the land north of South Africa and established Rhodesia. Rhodes' dream of a railway connecting Cape Town to Alexandria passing through a British Africa covering the continent is what led to his company's pressure on the government for further expansion into Africa.
   British gains in southern and East Africa prompted Rhodes and Alfred Milner, the United Kingdom's High Commissioner in South Africa, to urge a "Cape-to-Cairo" empire linking by rail the strategically important Canal to the mineral-rich South, though German occupation of Tanganyika prevented its realisation until the end of World War I. In 1903, the All Red Line telegraph system communicated with the major parts of the Empire.
   Paradoxically, the United Kingdom, the staunch advocate of free trade, emerged in 1914 with not only the largest overseas empire thanks to its long-standing presence in India, but also the greatest gains in the "scramble for Africa", reflecting its advantageous position at its inception. Between 1885 and 1914 the United Kingdom took nearly 30% of Africa's population under its control, compared to 15% for France, 9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and 1% for Italy: Nigeria alone contributed fifteen million subjects, more than in the whole of French West Africa or the entire German colonial empire.

Home rule in white-settler colonies

The United Kingdom's empire had already begun its transformation into the modern Commonwealth with the extension of Dominion status to the already self-governing colonies of Canada (1867), Australia (1901), New Zealand (1907), Newfoundland (1907), and the newly created Union of South Africa (1910). Leaders of the new states joined with British statesmen in periodic Colonial (from 1907, Imperial) Conferences, the first of which was held in London in 1887.
   The foreign relations of the Dominions were still conducted through the Foreign Office of the United Kingdom: Canada created a Department of External Affairs in 1909, but diplomatic relations with other governments continued to be channelled through the Governors-General, Dominion High Commissioners in London (first appointed by Canada in 1880 and by Australia in 1910) and British legations abroad.
   But the Dominions did enjoy a substantial freedom in their adoption of foreign policy where this didn't explicitly conflict with British interests: Canada's Liberal government negotiated a bilateral free-trade Reciprocity Agreement with the United States in 1911, but went down to defeat by the Conservative opposition.
   In defence, the Dominions' original treatment as part of a single imperial military and naval structure proved unsustainable as the United Kingdom faced new commitments in Europe and the challenge of an emerging German High Seas Fleet after 1900. In 1909 it was decided that the Dominions should have their own navies, reversing an 1887 agreement that the then Australasian colonies should contribute to the Royal Navy in return for the permanent stationing of a squadron in the region.

World War I (1914–1918)

Britain's declaration of war in 1914 on Germany and its allies, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, also committed the colonies and Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support during the war. Soon after the outbreak of hostilities, Germany's overseas colonies in Africa were invaded and occupied, though German forces in German East Africa remained undefeated during the war. In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and Samoa respectively. The contributions of Australian and New Zealand troops during the 1915 Battle of Gallipoli against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national conscious at home, and marked a watershed in the transition of Australia and New Zealand from colonies to nations in their own right. The countries continue to commemorate this occasion on ANZAC Day. Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridge in a similar light. In 1917, the Imperial War Cabinet was set up, with representation from each of the Dominion Prime Ministers, to coordinate imperial policy. The First World War placed enormous financial strain on Britain and its empire with resources, cash and foreign assets being diverted for the war. In 1914 Britain had £750,000,000 invested in the United States; by 1918 much of this had been sold in order to pay for the war effort.

Interwar period (1918–1939)

The aftermath of World War I saw the last major extension of British rule, with the United Kingdom gaining control through League of Nations Mandates in Palestine and Iraq after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, as well as in the former German colonies of Tanganyika, South-West Africa (now Namibia) and New Guinea (the last two actually under South African and Australian rule respectively).
The 1920s saw a rapid transformation of Dominion status. Although the Dominions had had no formal voice in declaring war in 1914, each was included separately among the signatories of the 1919 peace Treaty of Versailles, which had been negotiated by a British-led united Empire delegation. In 1922 Dominion reluctance to support British military action against Turkey influenced the United Kingdom's decision to seek a compromise settlement. The League of Nations deputed former German colonies to come under the control of the United Kingdom's colonies. For example, New Zealand took over the mandate of Western Samoa, Australia that of Rabaul and South Africa that of German South-West Africa.
Full Dominion independence was formalised in the 1931 Statute of Westminster: each Dominion was henceforth to be equal in status to the United Kingdom itself, free of British legislative interference and autonomous in international relations. The Dominions section created within the Colonial Office in 1907 was upgraded in 1925 to a separate Dominions Office and given its own Secretary of State in 1930. Canada led the way, becoming the first Dominion to conclude an international treaty entirely independently (1923) and obtaining the appointment (1928) of a British High Commissioner in Ottawa, thereby separating the administrative and diplomatic functions of the Governor-General and ending the latter's anomalous role as the representative of the head of state and of the British Government. Canada's first permanent diplomatic mission to a foreign country opened in Washington, DC, in 1927: Australia followed in 1940. Egypt, formally independent from 1922 but bound to the United Kingdom by treaty until 1936 (and under partial occupation until 1956) similarly severed all constitutional links with the United Kingdom. Iraq, which became a British Protectorate in 1922, also gained complete independence ten years later in 1932.

The Irish Free State

Irish home rule was to be provided under the Home Rule Act 1914, but the onset of World War I delayed its implementation indefinitely. At Easter 1916 an unsuccessful armed uprising was staged in Dublin by a mixed group of nationalists and socialists. From 1919 the Irish Republican Army fought a guerrilla war to secede from the United Kingdom. This Anglo-Irish War ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The treaty confirmed the division of Ireland into two states. Most of the island (26 counties) became independent as the Irish Free State, a dominion within the British Commonwealth. Meanwhile, the four counties in the north of the island with a majority Unionist community, along with two counties that had a Nationalist majority,
remained a part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland. The Free State evolved into the Republic of Ireland, which withdrew from the Commonwealth when the Republic of Ireland Act was enacted in 1949. Ireland's Constitution claimed Northern Ireland as a part of the Republic until 1998. The issue of whether Northern Ireland should remain in the United Kingdom or join the Republic of Ireland has divided Northern Ireland's people and was a factor in a long and bloody conflict known as the Troubles. The Good Friday Agreement of 1998 brought about a ceasefire between most of the major organisations on both sides.

Second World War (1939-1945)

Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown Colonies and the British Indian Empire but didn't automatically commit the Dominions. All except Ireland declared a state of hostility with Germany. The Irish Free State had negotiated the removal of the Royal Navy from the Treaty Ports the year before, and chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war. Australia entered the war as a British ally; Prime Minister Robert Menzies viewed Britain's declaration of war as automatically including Australia. Menzies was, however, concerned about Churchill's mis-handling of Australian forces in the Middle East. Menzies's successor John Curtin had a 'profound disillusionment with Britain, which led him to have Australia declare war on Japan in her own right. As Beaumont further said, relations between Britain and Australia 'soured rapidly' from that point on. "Curtin's call to the USA on 27 December 1941 gave an indication that Australian governments would no longer subordinate their own national interests to British strategic perspectives. Sudan was a British co-Dominion with Egypt; Newfoundland was controlled by the Colonial office.
The war would involve the whole of the Empire. Materiel and manpower would be drawn from all parts of the world. The dominions contributed large numbers of aircrew for the war in the air over Europe; many trained in Canada. The British Eighth Army fighting in North Africa was multi-national.

Decolonisation and decline (1945–1997)

Though the United Kingdom and its empire emerged victorious from World War II, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for four hundred years, was now literally in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, to whom the balance of global power had now shifted. Britain itself was left virtually bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a $3.5 billion loan from the United States, the last installment of which was repaid in 2006.
   At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations. The situation was complicated further by the increasing Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union, both nations opposed to the European colonialism of old, though American anti-Communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, which led the US to support the continued existence of the British Empire.
   However, the "wind of change" ultimately meant that the British Empire's days were numbered, and on the whole, Britain adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies once stable, non-Communist governments were ready to transition power to, in contrast to France and Portugal, which waged costly wars to keep their empires intact. Between 1945 and 1965 the number of people under British rule drastically fell from 700 million to 5 million, 3 million of which were in Hong Kong. The events at Suez wounded British national pride, leading one MP to describe it as "Britain's Waterloo" and another to suggest that the country had become an "American satellite". Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen the British political establishment as "Suez syndrome", from which Britain didn't recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.
   However, whilst The Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it didn't collapse. Britain again soon deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval, as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States prompted the landing of a Royal Navy party to officially claim the rock in the name of the Queen in 1955. In 1972 the Island of Rockall Act formally incorporated the island into the United Kingdom.

The Falklands War

In 1982, the United Kingdom's resolve to defend her remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire. The United Kingdom's ultimately successful military response to retake the islands during the ensuing Falklands War prompted headlines in the US press that "the Empire strikes back", and was viewed by many to have contributed to reversing the downward trend in the UK's status as a world power.

Handover of Hong Kong

In 1997, Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, per the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration. For many, including Charles, Prince of Wales who was in attendance at the ceremony, the handover of Britain's last major and by far most populous overseas territory marked "the end of Empire".

Legacy

The United Kingdom retains sovereignty over fourteen territories outside of the British Isles, collectively named the British overseas territories, which remain under British rule due to lack of support for independence among the local population or because the territory is uninhabited except for transient military or scientific personnel. British sovereignty of several of the overseas territories is disputed by their geographical neighbours: Gibraltar is claimed by Spain, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are claimed by Argentina, and the British Indian Ocean Territory is claimed by Mauritius and Seychelles. The British Antarctic Territory is subject to overlapping claims by Argentina and Chile, whilst many nations don't recognise any territorial claims to Antarctica.
Most former British colonies (and one former Portuguese colony) are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a non-political, voluntary association of equal members, in which the United Kingdom has no privileged status. The head of the Commonwealth is currently Queen Elizabeth II. Fifteen members of the Commonwealth continue to share their head of state with the United Kingdom, as Commonwealth realms.
Many former British colonies share or shared certain characteristics:

The English language as either the main or secondary language.
A democratic parliamentary system of government modelled on the Westminster system.
A legal system based upon English law. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, one of the United Kingdom's highest courts of appeal, still serves as the highest court of appeal for several former colonies.
A military, police and civil service based upon British models.
The English and later the imperial systems of measurement. The United States, which uses the older English system, Cyprus and Burma are the only former British colonies not to have officially adopted the metric system. However, the imperial system is still very much used in many "officially metric" countries, such as Canada, Belize, Sierra Leone, and Ireland.
Educational institutions such as boarding schools and universities modelled on Oxford and Cambridge.
Driving on the left hand side of the road, with some exceptions mainly in North America and North Africa.
Popularity of cricket and/or rugby union, as well as related sports.

Several ongoing conflicts and disputes around the world can trace their origins to borders inherited by countries from the British Empire: the Guatemalan claim to Belize, the Kashmir conflict, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and within Africa, where political boundaries didn't reflect homogeneous ethnicities or religions. The British Empire was also responsible for large migrations of peoples. Millions left the British Isles, with the founding settler populations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand coming mainly from Britain and Ireland. Tensions remain between the mainly British-descended populations of Canada, Australia and New Zealand and the indigenous minorities in those countries, and between settler minorities and indigenous majorities in South Africa and Zimbabwe. British settlement of Ireland continues to leave its mark in the form of a divided Catholic and Protestant community. Millions of people also moved between British colonies, for example from India to the Caribbean and Africa, creating the conditions for the expulsion of Indians in Uganda in 1972. The makeup of Britain itself was changed after the Second World War with immigration to the United Kingdom from the colonies to which it was granting independence.

Further Information

Get more info on 'British Colony'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://british_empire.totallyexplained.com">British Empire Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.