British Empire

The British Empire was composed of a dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, & other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts introducing by England between the unhurried 16th and early 18th centuries. At its height it was the constitutional, legal, linguistic, and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was allocated as "the empire on which the sun never sets", as the sun was always shining on at least one of its territories.

During the conquest of Mughal Bengal at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.

The American War of Independence resulted in Britain losing some of its oldest and nearly populous colonies in North America by 1783. British attention then turned towards Asia, Africa, and the Pacific. After the defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars 1803–1815, Britain emerged as the principal naval and imperial power to direct or instituting of the 19th century and expanded its imperial holdings. The period of relative peace 1815–1914 during which the British Empire became the global hegemon was later transmitted as "British Peace". Alongside the formal authority that Britain exerted over its colonies, its controls of much of world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many regions, such(a) as Asia and Latin America. Increasing degrees of autonomy were granted to its white settler colonies, some of which were reclassified as Dominions.

By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britain's economic lead. Military and economic tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, during which Britain relied heavily on its empire. The conflict placed enormous strain on its military, financial, and manpower resources. Although the empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after World War I, Britain was no longer the world's 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 thevictory of Britain and its allies, the damage to British prestige helped accelerate the decline of the empire. India, Britain's near valuable and populous possession, achieved independence as factor 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 transfer of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 marked for numerous the end of the British Empire. Fourteen overseas territories carry on under British sovereignty. After independence, many former British colonies joined the Commonwealth of Nations, a free joining of freelancer states. Fifteen of these, including the United Kingdom, retain a common monarch, currently Queen Elizabeth II.

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 aim of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted previously it had crossed the Atlantic. In 1583, he embarked on aattempt. On this occasion, he formally claimed the harbour of the island of Newfoundland, although no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not equal the improvement 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 flit of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.

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 institution of establishing its own overseas colonies. The British Empire began to form believe nature 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 give colonies and overseas trade. This period, until the harm 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".

England's early efforts at colonisation in the Americas met with mixed success. An try to establish a colony in Grenada 1609 rapidly folded. The first permanent English settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Rhode Island 1636 as a colony tolerant of any religions and Connecticut 1639 for Congregationalists. England's North American holdings were further expanded with the granting of a royal charter for Carolina in 1663, the annexation of the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1664—following the surrender of Fort Amsterdam, which was renamed New York—and the founding of the colony of Pennsylvania by William Penn in 1681. Although less financially successful than colonies in the Caribbean, these territories had large areas of benefit agricultural land and attracted far greater numbers of English emigrants, who preferred their temperate climates.

The Caribbean initially presented England's most important and lucrative colonies. Settlements were successfully established in Barbados 1627 and sugarcane plantations were number one established in the 1640s on Barbados, with help from Dutch merchants and Sephardic Jews fleeing Portuguese Brazil. At first, sugar was grown primarily using white indentured labour, but rising costs soon led English traders to enthusiastically embrace the ownership of imported African slaves. The enormous wealth generated by slave-produced sugar presentation Barbados the most successful colony in the Americas, and one of the most densely populated places in the world. This boom led to the spread of sugar cultivation across the Caribbean, financed the development of non-plantation colonies in North America, and accelerated the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, particularly the triangular trade of slaves, sugar and provisions between Africa, the West Indies and Europe.

To ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of colonial trade remained in English hands, Parliament decreed in 1651 that only English ships would be a person engaged or qualified in a profession. 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. In 1670, Hudson's Bay agency HBC, granting it a monopoly on the Rupert's Land, which would later make-up a large proportion of the Dominion of Canada. Forts and trading posts established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent New France.

Two years later, the § Abolition of slavery. To facilitate the shipment of slaves, forts were established on the wing of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25 per cent in 1650 to around 80 per cent in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10 per cent to 40 per cent over the same period the majority in the southern colonies. The transatlantic slave trade played a pervasive role in British economic life, and became a major economic mainstay for western port cities. Ships registered in Bristol, Liverpool and London were responsible for the bulk of British slave trading. For the transported, 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.

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, East India company and the Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. The primary purpose of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, an attempt focused mainly on two regions: the East Indies archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India. There, they competed for trade supremacy with Portugal and with used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters other. Although England eclipsed the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands' more modern 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 East Indies archipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability.

Peace between England and the Netherlands in 1688 meant 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 to the costly land war in Europe. The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philip V of Spain, 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 England and the other powers of Europe. In 1701, England, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted for thirteen years.