British Empire

The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1922, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, one-quarter of the world's population,^[1] and covered more than 13,000,000 square miles (33,670,000 km²): approximately a quarter of the Earth's total land area.^[2] As a result, its political, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread. 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 territories.

During the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Spain and Portugal pioneered European exploration of the globe and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires bestowed, England, France and the Netherlands began to establish colonies and trade networks of their own in the Americas and Asia.^[3] A series of wars in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Netherlands and France left England (Britain, following the 1707 Act of Union with Scotland) the dominant colonial power in North America and India. However, the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in North America in 1783 after a war of independence was a blow to Britain, depriving it of its most populous colonies. Despite this setback, British attention soon turned towards Africa, Asia and the Pacific. Following the defeat of Napoleonic France in 1815, Britain enjoyed a century of effectively unchallenged dominance, and expanded its imperial holdings across the globe. Increasing degrees of autonomy were granted to its white settler colonies, some of which were reclassified as dominions

British Empire
The areas of the world that at one time were part of the British Empire. Current British overseas territories are underlined in red.

The growth of Germany and the United States eroded Britain's economic lead by the end of the 19th century. Subsequent military and economic tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, for which Britain leaned heavily upon its Empire. The conflict placed enormous financial strain on Britain, and although the Empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after the war, it was no longer a peerless industrial or military power. Despite emerging victorious, the Second World War saw Britain's colonies in South-East Asia occupied by Japan, which damaged British prestige and accelerated the decline of the Empire. Within two years of the end of the war, Britain granted independence to its most populous and valuable colony, India.

During the remainder of the 20th century, most of the territories of the Empire became independent as part of a larger global decolonisation movement by European powers, ending with the return of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China in 1997. After independence, many former British colonies joined the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states. Sixteen Commonwealth nations share their head of state, Queen Elizabeth II, as Commonwealth realms. Fourteen territories remain under British sovereignty, the British overseas territories.

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

Robert Clive's victory at the Battle of Plassey established the Company as a military as well as a commercial power.

Company rule in India

Main article: Company rule in India

During its first century of operation, the English East India Company focused on trade with the Indian subcontinent, as it was not in a position to challenge the powerful Mughal Empire,^[40] which had granted it trading rights in 1617. This changed in the 18th century as the Mughals declined in power and the East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the Compagnie française des Indes orientales, during the Carnatic Wars in the 1740s and 1750s. The Battle of Plassey in 1757, which saw the British, led by Robert Clive, defeat the French and their Indian allies, left the Company in control of Bengal and as the major military and political power in India.^[24] In the following decades it gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local puppet rulers under the threat of force from the British Indian Army, the vast majority of which was composed of native Indian sepoys.^[41] The Company's conquest of India was complete by 1857. The Indian Rebellion that year eventually led to the end of the East India Company and India came to be ruled directly by the British Raj.

Loss of the Thirteen American Colonies

Main article: American Revolution

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,^[42] summarised at the time by the slogan "No taxation without representation". Disagreement over the American colonists' guaranteed Rights as Englishmen turned to violence and, in 1775, the American War of Independence began. The following year, the colonists declared the independence of the United States and, with assistance from France, Spain, and the Netherlands would go on to win the war in 1783.

Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. The loss of the American colonies marked the end of the "first British Empire".

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,^[43] 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.^[39][44] The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 seemed to confirm Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.^[45][46] Tensions between the two nations escalated during the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France, and boarded American ships to impress into the Royal Navy men of British birth. The U.S. declared war, the War of 1812, in which both sides tried to make major gains at the other's expense. Both failed and the Treaty of Ghent, ratified in 1815, kept the pre-war boundaries.^[47]

Events in America influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000^[48] defeated Loyalists had migrated from America following independence. The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John River in Nova Scotia felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784.^[49] 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 French and British 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.^[50]

Exploration of the Pacific

The voyages of discovery by James Cook in the Pacific Ocean led to the founding of several British colonies, including Australia and New Zealand.

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.^[51] Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government turned to the newly discovered lands of Australia.^[52] The western coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by the Dutch explorer Willem Jansz in 1606 and was later named by the Dutch East India Company New Holland,^[53] but there was no attempt to colonise it. In 1770 James Cook discovered the eastern coast of Australia while on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific Ocean, claimed the continent for Britain, and named it New South Wales.^[52] 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.^[52] Britain continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840, at which time the colony's population numbered 56,000, the majority of whom were convicts, ex-convicts or their descendants.^[54] The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold.^[54]

During his voyage, Cook also visited New Zealand, first discovered by Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642, and claimed the North and South islands for the British crown in 1769 and 1770 respectively. Initially, interaction between the native Maori population and Europeans was limited to the trading of goods. European settlement increased through the early decades of the 19th century, with numerous trading stations established, especially in the North. In 1839, the New Zealand Company announced plans to buy large tracts of land and establish colonies in New Zealand. On 6 February 1840, Captain William Hobson and around 40 Maori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi.^[55] This treaty is considered by many to be New Zealand's founding document,^[56] but differing interpretations of the Maori and English versions of the text^[57] have meant that it continues to be a source of dispute.^[58]

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.^[59] It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was threatened: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe.

The British Empire following the defeat of Napoleon in 1815^[60]

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 a Franco-Spanish 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 was again the beneficiary of peace treaties: France ceded the Ionian Islands, Malta (which it had occupied in 1797 and 1798 respectively), Seychelles, Mauritius, St Lucia, and Tobago; Spain ceded Trinidad; the Netherlands Guyana, and the Cape Colony. Britain returned Guadeloupe, Martinique, Goree, French Guiana, and Réunion to France, and Java, and Suriname to the Netherlands.

Abolition of slavery

Under increasing pressure from the abolitionist movement, Britain enacted the Slave Trade Act in 1807 which abolished the slave trade in the Empire. In 1808, Sierra Leone was designated an official British colony for freed slaves.^[61] The Slavery Abolition Act passed in 1833 made not just the slave trade but slavery itself illegal, emancipating all slaves in the British Empire on 1 August 1834.

"First British Empire" (1583–1783)

In 1578, Queen Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration.^[15] That year, Gilbert sailed for the West Indies 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.^[15][16] In 1583 he embarked on a second attempt, on this occasion to the island of Newfoundland whose harbour he formally claimed for England, though 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 colony of Roanoke on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.^[17]

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.^[18] 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 American War of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has subsequently been referred to as the "First British Empire".^[19]

Americas, Africa and the slave trade

The Caribbean initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies,^[20] 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.^[21] 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).^[22] 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 that 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.

British colonies in North America, c. 1750. 1: Newfoundland; 2: Nova Scotia; 3: The Thirteen Colonies; 4: Bermuda; 5: Bahamas; 6: British Honduras; 7: Jamaica; 8: Lesser Antilles

England's first permanent settlement in the Americas 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.^[23] 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.^[24] 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 exchange for Suriname. In 1681, the colony of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn. The American colonies 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 preferred their temperate climates.^[25]

In 1670, King Charles II granted a charter to the Hudson's Bay Company, granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in what was then known as Rupert's Land, a vast stretch of territory that would later make up a large proportion of Canada. Forts and trading posts established by the Company were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent New France.^[26]

Two years later, the Royal African Company was inaugurated, receiving from King Charles a monopoly of the trade to supply slaves to the British colonies of the Caribbean.^[27] From the outset, slavery was the basis of the British Empire in the West Indies. 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.^[28] 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 of black people rose from 25 percent in 1650 to around 80 percent in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10 percent to 40 percent over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies).^[29] 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. 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.^[30]

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, and afflicted by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland—a quarter of Scottish capital^[31] was lost in the enterprise—and ended Scottish hopes of establishing its own overseas empire. The episode also had major political consequences, persuading the governments of both England and Scotland of the merits of a union of countries, rather than just crowns.^[32] This was achieved in 1707 with the Treaty of Union, establishing the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Rivalry with the Netherlands in 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.

Fort St. George was founded at Madras in 1639

Although England would ultimately eclipse the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands' more advanced financial system^[33] 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.^[33] The English East India Company shifted its focus from Surat—a hub of the spice trade network—to Fort St George (later to become Madras), Bombay (ceded by the Portuguese to Charles II of England in 1661 as dowry for Catherine de Braganza) and Sutanuti (which would merge with two other villages to form Calcutta).

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.^[34] 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.^[35]

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 England and the other powers of Europe.^[36] In 1701, Britain, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted until 1714. At the concluding Treaty of Utrecht, Philip renounced his and his descendants' right to the French throne and Spain lost its empire in Europe.^[37] 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 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.^[38]

Defeat of French fireships at Quebec in 1759

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 the future of the British Empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power there was effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert's Land,^[26] 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.

Origins (1497–1583)

A replica of The Matthew, John Cabot's ship used for his second voyage to the New World

The foundation for the British Empire was laid 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.^[4] Cabot sailed in 1497, and though he successfully made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland (mistakenly believing, like Christopher Columbus five years earlier, that he had reached Asia),^[5] there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but nothing was heard from his ships again.^[6]

No further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Elizabeth I, during the last decades of the 16th century.^[7] The Protestant Reformation had made enemies of England and Catholic Spain.^[4] In 1562, the English Crown sanctioned the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against African towns and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa^[8] with the aim of breaking into the Atlantic trade system. This effort was rebuffed and later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth lent her blessing to further piratical raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic, laden with treasure from the New World.^[9] At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was the first to use the term "British Empire")^[10] 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 late comer in comparison to Spain and Portugal, England had been engaged in colonial settlement in Ireland, drawing on precedents dating back to the Norman invasion in 1171.^[11][12] The 16th century Plantations of Ireland, run by English colonists, were a precursor to the colonies established on the North Atlantic seaboard,^[13] 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 Humphrey Gilbert, Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake, John Hawkins, Richard Grenville and Ralph Lane.

Legacy

The UK retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles,^[176] which were renamed the British overseas territories in 2002.^[177] Some are uninhabited except for transient military or scientific personnel; the remainder are self-governing to varying degrees and are reliant on the UK for foreign relations and defence. The British government has stated its willingness to assist any Overseas Territory that wishes to proceed to independence, where that is an option.^[178] 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.^[179] The British Antarctic Territory is subject to overlapping claims by Argentina and Chile, while many nations do not recognise any territorial claims to Antarctica.

The fourteen British overseas territories

Most former British colonies are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a non-political, voluntary association of equal members, in which the UK has no privileged status. Fifteen members of the Commonwealth continue to share their head of state with the UK, as Commonwealth realms.

Decades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on the independent nations that arose from the British Empire. The English language is the primary language of over 300 million people, and the secondary language of over 400 million,^[180] helped in part by the cultural influence of the United States, itself a product of the British Empire. The English parliamentary system served as the template for the governments for many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems.^[181] The British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, one of the UK's highest courts of appeal, still serves as the highest court of appeal for several former colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific. British Protestant missionaries who fanned out across the globe often in advance of soldiers and civil servants spread the Anglican Communion to all continents. British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway stations and government buildings, continues to stand in many cities that were once part of the British Empire.^[182] Ball games that were developed in Victorian Britain—football, cricket, rugby, lawn tennis and golf^[183]—were exported, as were the British choice of system of measurement, the imperial system, and the British convention of driving on the left hand side of the road.

Political boundaries drawn by the British did not always reflect homogeneous ethnicities or religions, contributing to conflicts in Kashmir, Palestine, Sudan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka. 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 white settler populations of these countries and their indigenous minorities, and between settler minorities and indigenous majorities in South Africa and Zimbabwe. British settlement of Ireland has left its mark in the form of divided Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland. Millions of people moved to and from British colonies, with large numbers of Indians emigrating to other parts of the Empire. Chinese emigration, primarily from Southern China, led to the creation of Chinese-majority Singapore and small Chinese minorities in the Caribbean. 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

Decolonisation and decline (1945–1997)

Though Britain and the Empire emerged victorious from the Second World War, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, 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.^[127] 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,^[128] the last instalment of which was repaid in 2006.^[129]

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.^[130]

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 available to transfer power to, in contrast to other European powers like France or Portugal,^[131] which waged costly and ultimately unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to five million, three million of whom were in Hong Kong.^[130]

Initial disengagement

Mahatma Gandhi and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, key leaders of the Indian independence movement

The pro-decolonisation Labour government elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the Empire, that of Indian independence.^[132] India's two independence movements—the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League—had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed as to how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest and the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy during 1946 led Attlee to promise independence no later than 1948, but when the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent to Britain's newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, partitioned independence was hastily brought forward to 15 August 1947.^[133] The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan.^[134] Millions of Muslims subsequently crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus in the reverse direction, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of the British Raj, and Ceylon gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan and Ceylon became members of the Commonwealth, though Burma chose not to join.^[135]

The British Mandate of Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India.^[136] The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following Nazi oppression and genocide in the Second World War. Rather than deal with the issue, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve,^[137] which it did by voting for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state.

Following the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin. The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malayan-Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted.^[138] The Malayan Emergency, as it was known, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and British North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-dominated Singapore left the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations.^[139] Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union^[140] and maintained its status until independence in 1984.

[edit] Suez and its aftermath

British Prime Minister Anthony Eden's decision to invade Egypt during the Suez Crisis ended his political career and revealed Britain's weakness as an imperial power.

In 1951, the Conservative Party was returned to power in Britain, under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power relied on the continued existence of the Empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India. However, Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would become independent by 1955.^[141]

In 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of the new British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, was to collude with France to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the canal.^[142] Eden infuriated his US counterpart, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion.^[143] Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after Nikita Khrushchev threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency.^[144] Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objective of recapturing the Suez Canal,^[145] UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a very humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned.^[146]

The Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage, demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States.^{[147][148][149]} The events at Suez wounded British national pride, leading one MP to describe it as "Britain's Waterloo"^[150] and another to suggest that the country had become an "American satellite".^[151] Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen the British political establishment as "Suez syndrome",^[152] from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.

While the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse.^[153] 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,^[154] as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States.^[150] Britain maintained a presence in the Middle East for another decade, withdrawing from Aden in 1967, and Bahrain in 1971.

Wind of change

Macmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of "the wind of change blowing through this continent."^[155] Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly.^[156] To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the 1950s—Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya—were added nearly ten times that number in the 1960s.^[155]

British decolonisation in Africa. By the end of the 1960s, all but Rhodesia (the future Zimbabwe) and the South African mandate of South West Africa (Namibia) had achieved independence.

Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968 (see map). British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was complicated by the region's white settler populations, particularly in Rhodesia where racial tensions had led Ian Smith, the Prime Minister, to a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the British Empire in 1965.^[157] Rhodesia remained in a state of civil war between its black and white population until the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, under which Rhodesia was temporarily returned to British colonial rule until elections could be held, under British supervision. The elections were held the following year and won by Robert Mugabe, who became the Prime Minister of the newly independent state of Zimbabwe.^[158]

In the Mediterranean, a guerrilla war waged by Greek Cypriots ended (1960) in an independent Cyprus, with the UK retaining the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo were amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain.^[157]

Most of the UK's West Indies territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two by far largest members.^[159] Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands in the 1970s and 1980s, but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence.^[160] The British Virgin Islands,^[161] Cayman Islands^[162] and Montserrat^[163] opted to retain ties with Britain. Guyana achieved independence from the UK in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.

British territories in the Pacific acquired independence between 1970 (Fiji) and 1980 (Vanuatu), the latter's independence having been delayed due to political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France.^[53] Fiji, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea chose to become Commonwealth realms.

End of empire

The granting of independence to Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe) and the New Hebrides (as Vanuatu) in 1980 and Belize in 1981 meant that, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts (and the acquisition in 1955 of an uninhabited rock in the Atlantic Ocean, Rockall),^[164] the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete.

In 1982, Britain's resolve to defend its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire.^[165] Britain's ultimately successful military response to retake the islands during the ensuing Falklands War was viewed by many to have contributed to reversing the downward trend in the UK's status as a world power.^[166]

The same year, the Canadian government severed its last legal link with Britain by patriating the Canadian constitution from Britain. The 1982 Canada Act passed by the British parliament ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution.^[167] Equivalent acts were passed for Australia and New Zealand in 1986.^[168]

In September 1982, the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese government on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong.^[169] Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, Hong Kong Island itself had been ceded to Britain "in perpetuity", but the vast majority of the colony was constituted by the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99 year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997.^[170] Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China.^[171] A deal was reached in 1984—under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would become a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, maintaining its way of life for at least 50 years.^[172] The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many,^[173] including Charles, Prince of Wales^[174] who was in attendance, "the end of Empire".

World wars (1914–1945)

By the turn of the 20th century, fears had begun to grow in Britain that it would no longer be able to defend the metropole and the entirety of the Empire while at the same time maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation".^[90] Germany was rising rapidly as a military and industrial power and was now seen as the most likely opponent in any future war. Recognising that it was overstretched in the Pacific^[91] and threatened at home by the German navy, Britain formed an alliance with Japan in 1902, and its old enemies France and Russia in 1904 and 1907, respectively.^[92]

First World War

Main article: History of the United Kingdom during World War I

The Grand Fleet sails for Jutland, 1916.

Britain's fears of war with Germany were realised in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. The British declaration of war on Germany and its allies also committed the colonies and Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support. Over 2.5 million men served in the armies of the Dominions, as well as many thousands of volunteers from the Crown colonies.^[93] Most of Germany's overseas colonies in Africa were quickly invaded and occupied, and 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 Gallipoli Campaign against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national consciousness 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.^[94] The important contribution of the Dominions to the war effort was recognised in 1917 by the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George when he invited each of the Dominion Prime Ministers to join an Imperial War Cabinet to coordinate imperial policy.^[95]

Under the terms of the concluding Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, the Empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of 1,800,000 square miles (4,662,000 km²) and 13 million new subjects.^[96] The colonies of Germany and the Ottoman Empire were distributed to the Allied powers as League of Nations Mandates. Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togo, and Tanganyika. The Dominions themselves also acquired mandates of their own: South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia) was given to the Union of South Africa, Australia gained German New Guinea, and New Zealand Western Samoa. Nauru was made a combined mandate of Britain and the two Pacific Dominions.^[97]

Inter-war period

The British Empire following the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, at its greatest extent.

The changing world order that the war had brought about, in particular the growth of the United States and Japan as naval powers, and the rise of independence movements in India and Ireland, caused a major reassessment of British imperial policy.^[98] Forced to choose between alignment with the United States or Japan, Britain opted not to renew its Japanese alliance and instead signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, where Britain accepted naval parity with the United States.^[99] This decision was the source of much debate in Britain during the 1930s^[100] as militaristic governments took hold in Japan and Germany helped in part by the Great Depression, for it was feared that the Empire could not survive a simultaneous attack by both nations.^[101] Although the issue of the Empire's security was a serious concern in Britain, at the same time the Empire was vital to the British economy: during the inter-war period, exports to the colonies and Dominions increased from 32 to 39 percent of all exports overseas, and imports increased from 24 to 37 percent.^[102]

In 1919, the frustrations caused by delays to Irish home rule led members of Sinn Féin, a pro-independence party that had won a majority of the Irish seats at Westminster in the 1918 British general election, to establish an Irish assembly in Dublin, at which Irish independence was declared. The Irish Republican Army simultaneously began a guerrilla war against the British administration.^[103] The Anglo-Irish War ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown.^[104] Northern Ireland, consisting of six of the 32 Irish counties which had been established as a devolved region under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, immediately exercised its option under the treaty to retain its existing status within the United Kingdom.^[105]

King George V with the British and Dominion prime ministers at the 1926 Imperial Conference.

A similar struggle began in India when the Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy demand for independence.^[106] Concerns over communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar Conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by the Rowlatt Acts, creating tension,^[107] particularly in the Punjab, where repressive measures culminated in the Amritsar Massacre. In Britain public opinion was divided over the morality of the event, between those who saw it as having saved India from anarchy, and those who viewed it with revulsion.^[107] The subsequent non-cooperation movement was called off in March 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident, and discontent continued to simmer for the next 25 years.

In 1922, Egypt, which had been declared a British protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War, was granted formal independence, though it continued to be a British client state until 1954. British troops remained stationed in Egypt until the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936,^[108] under which it was agreed that the troops would withdraw but continue to occupy and defend the Suez Canal zone. In return, Egypt was assisted to join the League of Nations.^[109] Iraq, a British mandate since 1919, also gained membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from Britain in 1932.^[110]

The ability of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy, independent of Britain, was recognised at the 1923 Imperial Conference.^[111] Britain's request for military assistance from the Dominions at the outbreak of the Chanak crisis the previous year had been turned down by Canada and South Africa, and Canada had refused to be bound by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.^[112][113] After pressure from Ireland and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference issued the Balfour Declaration, declaring the Dominions to be "autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another" within a "British Commonwealth of Nations".^[114] This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster.^[115] The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent.^[115] Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression.^[116] Ireland distanced itself further from Britain with the introduction of a new constitution in 1937, making it a republic in all but name.^[117]

Second World War

Main article: Military history of the United Kingdom during the Second World War

The Eighth Army was made up of units from across the Empire and fought in the Western Desert and Italy

Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions. Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand all soon declared war on Germany, but the Irish Free State chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war.^[118] After the German occupation of France in 1940, Britain and the Empire were left standing alone against Germany until the entry of the Soviet Union to the war in 1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill successfully lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military aid from the United States, but Roosevelt was not yet ready to ask Congress to commit the country to war.^[119] In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met and signed the Atlantic Charter, which included the statement that "the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live" should be respected. This wording was ambiguous as to whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany, or the peoples colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by the British, Americans and nationalist movements.^[120][121]

In December 1941, Japan launched in quick succession attacks on British Malaya, the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, and Hong Kong. Japan had steadily been growing as an imperial power in the Far East since its defeat of China in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895,^[122] envisioning a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under its leadership. The Japanese attacks on the British and American possessions in the Pacific had an immediate and long-lasting impact on the British Empire. Churchill's reaction to the entry of the United States into the war was that Britain was now assured of victory and the future of the Empire was safe,^[123] but the manner in which the British rapidly surrendered irreversibly altered Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power.^[124][125] Most damaging of all was the fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar.^[126] The realisation that Britain could not defend the entire Empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States, which after the war eventually resulted in the 1951 ANZUS Pact between Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America.