British Empire

Origins (1497–1583) A replica of the Matthew , John Cabot 's ship used for his second voyage to the New World in 1497 The foundations of the overseas British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms, and, at the time ruled by different monarchs. In 1496, King Henry VII of England , following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead an expedition to discover a Northwest Passage to Asia via the North Atlantic. [ 1 ] Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus , and made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland . He believed he had reached Asia, [ 2 ] and there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but did not return; it is unknown what happened to his ships. [ 3 ] There is "inferential evidence [that] suggests that Bristol mariners may already have known of that North American shore and had been harvesting its rich seas for a decade or more", but England made no formal claims. [ 4 ] No further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Queen Elizabeth I , during the last decades of the 16th century. [ 5 ] In the meantime, Henry VIII 's 1533 Statute in Restraint of Appeals had declared "that this realm of England is an Empire". [ 6 ] The Protestant Reformation turned England and Catholic Spain into implacable enemies. [ 1 ] In 1562, Elizabeth I encouraged the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa [ 7 ] with the aim of establishing an Atlantic slave trade . This effort was rebuffed and later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth I gave her blessing to further privateering raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic, laden with treasure from the New World . [ 8 ] At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was the first to use the term "British Empire") [ 9 ] were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own empire. By this time, Spain had become the dominant power in the Americas and was exploring the Pacific Ocean, Portugal had established trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River area, later to become New France . [ 10 ] Although England tended to trail behind Portugal, Spain, and France in establishing overseas colonies, it carried out its first modern colonisation, in sixteenth-century Ireland, with settlements , known as "plantations", of English and Welsh Protestants. England had already colonised part of the country following the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169, [ 11 ] but English authority had waned over the centuries. During the reign of Elizabeth I, a pattern of conquest and attempts at colonization was "contemporaneous with and parallel to the first effective of Englishmen in North America". [ 12 ] Several men who helped establish the Munster plantations in Ireland later played a part in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country Men . [ 13 ] ^ a b Ferguson 2002 , p. 3. ^ Andrews 1984 , p. 45. ^ Ferguson 2002 , p. 4. ^ Meining, D.W. The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, Vol. 1, Atlantic America, 1492–1800 . New Haven: Yale University Press 1986, 24–25 ^ Canny 1998 , p. 35. ^ Koebner 1953 , pp. 29–52. ^ Thomas 1997 , pp. 155–158. ^ Ferguson 2002 , p. 7. ^ Canny 1998 , p. 62. ^ Lloyd 1996 , pp. 4–8. ^ Canny 1998 , p. 7; Kenny 2006 , p. 5. ^ Canny, Nicholas P. "The Ideology of English Colonization From Ireland to America". The William and Mary Quarterly . Oct. 1973. Vol. 30. No. 4, p. 575 ^ Taylor 2001 , pp. 119, 123. Read more on Wikipedia →

Expansion and colonial conflict (1707–1783) Robert Clive 's victory at the Battle of Plassey established the East India Company as both a military and commercial power. The 18th century saw the newly united Great Britain rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, with France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage. [ 1 ] Great Britain, Portugal , the Netherlands , and the Holy Roman Empire continued the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted until 1714 and was concluded by the Treaty of Utrecht . Philip V of Spain renounced his and his descendants' claim to the French throne, and Spain lost its empire in Europe. [ 2 ] The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia , and from Spain, Gibraltar and Menorca . Gibraltar became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean . Spain ceded the rights to the lucrative asiento (permission to sell African slaves in Spanish America ) to Britain. [ 3 ] With the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739, Spanish privateers attacked British merchant shipping along the Triangle Trade routes. In 1746, the Spanish and British began peace talks, with the King of Spain agreeing to stop all attacks on British shipping; however, in the 1750 Treaty of Madrid , Britain lost its slave-trading rights in Latin America. [ 4 ] In the East Indies, British and Dutch merchants continued to compete in spices and textiles. With textiles becoming the larger trade, by 1720, in terms of sales, the British company had overtaken the Dutch. [ 5 ] During the middle decades of the 18th century, there were several outbreaks of military conflict on the Indian subcontinent , as the English East India Company and its French counterpart , struggled alongside local rulers to fill the vacuum that had been left by the decline of the Mughal Empire . The Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which the British defeated the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies, left the British East India Company in control of Bengal and as a major military and political power in India. [ 6 ] France was left control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states , ending French hopes of controlling India. [ 7 ] In the following decades the British East India Company gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local rulers under the threat of force from the Presidency Armies , the vast majority of which was composed of Indian sepoys , led by British officers. [ 8 ] The British and French struggles in India became but one theatre of the global Seven Years' War (1756–1763) involving France, Britain, and the other major European powers. [ 9 ] The signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1763 had important consequences for the future of the British Empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert's Land, [ 9 ] and the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded the Floridas to Britain. Along with its victory over France in India, the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's most powerful maritime power . [ 10 ] Loss of the Thirteen American Colonies Main articles: American Revolution , American Revolutionary War , Decolonization of the Americas , British North America , History of Canada (1763–1867) , and War of 1812 See also: Timeline of the American Revolution During the 1760s and early 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. [ 11 ] This was summarised at the time by the colonists' slogan " No taxation without representation ", a perceived violation of the guaranteed Rights of Englishmen . The American Revolution began with a rejection of Parliamentary authority and moves towards self-government. In response, Britain sent troops to reimpose direct rule, leading to the outbreak of war in 1775. The following year, in 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the colonies' sovereignty from the British Empire as the new United States of America. The entry of French and Spanish forces into the war tipped the military balance in the Americans' favour and after a decisive defeat at Yorktown in 1781, Britain began negotiating peace terms. American independence was acknowledged at the Peace of Paris in 1783. [ 12 ] The loss of such a large portion of British America , at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by some historians as the event defining the transition between the first and second empires, [ 13 ] in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas and towards Asia, the Pacific, and later Africa. [ 14 ] 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. [ 15 ] 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. [ 16 ] The war to the south influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000 [ 17 ] defeated Loyalists had migrated from the new United States following independence. [ 18 ] The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia , felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax , so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784. [ 19 ] The Constitutional Act 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. [ 20 ] Tensions between Britain and the United States escalated again during the Napoleonic Wars , as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France and boarded American ships to impress men into the Royal Navy . The United States Congress declared war, the War of 1812 , and invaded Canadian territory. In response, Britain invaded the US, but the pre-war boundaries were reaffirmed by the 1814 Treaty of Ghent , ensuring Canada's future would be separate from that of the United States. [ 21 ] ^ Pagden 2003 , p. 90. ^ Shennan 1995 , pp. 11–17. ^ James 2001 , p. 58. ^ Anderson & Combe 1801 , p. 277. ^ Ferguson 2002 , p. 19. ^ Smith 1998 , p. 17. ^ Bandyopādhyāẏa 2004 , pp. 49–52. ^ Smith 1998 , pp. 18–19. ^ a b Buckner 2008 , p. 25. ^ Pagden 2003 , p. 91. ^ Ferguson 2002 , p. 84. ^ Marshall 1996 , pp. 312–223. ^ Canny 1998 , p. 92. ^ For a review of the historiography of the concepts of the first and second British Empires, see: Robin Winks and Wm. Roger Louis (eds.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume V: Historiography (Oxford Academic: 1999) , chapter 2 ( P. J. Marshall , "The First British Empire"), and chapter 3 ( C.A. Bayley , "The Second British Empire"). ^ Pagden 2003 , p. 91; James 2001 , p. 120. ^ James 2001 , p. 119; Marshall 1998 , p. 585. ^ Zolberg 2006 , p. 496. ^ Games 2002 , pp. 46–48. ^ Kelley & Trebilcock 2010 , p. 43. ^ Smith 1998 , p. 28. ^ Latimer 2007 , pp. 8, 30–34, 389–392; Marshall 1998 , p. 388. Read more on Wikipedia →

Britain's imperial century (1815–1914) See also: Timeline of British diplomatic history § 1815–1860 , Industrial Revolution , and Political and diplomatic history of the Victorian era During Britain's "imperial century" between 1815 and 1914, [ 1 ] around 10 million sq mi (26 million km 2 ) of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire. [ 2 ] Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in Central Asia . [ 3 ] Unchallenged at sea, Britain became the global policeman , a state of affairs later known as the Pax Britannica , [ 4 ] and a foreign policy of " splendid isolation ". [ 5 ] 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 countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam , which were seen as its " Informal Empire ". [ 6 ] An 1876 political cartoon of Benjamin Disraeli making Queen Victoria Empress of India . The caption reads "New crowns for old ones!" British imperial strength was underpinned by the steamship and the telegraph , new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, the All Red Line . [ 7 ] East India Company rule and the British Raj in India Main article: Presidencies and provinces of British India See also: Company rule in India and British Raj The East India Company drove 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 co-operate in arenas outside India: the eviction of the French from Egypt (1799), [ 8 ] the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Penang Island (1786), Singapore (February 1819) and Malacca (March 1824), and the defeat of Burma (1826). [ 3 ] From its base in India, the company had been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to Qing China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by China in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China. [ 9 ] In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War , and resulted in the seizure by Britain of Hong Kong Island , at that time a minor settlement, and other treaty ports including Shanghai . [ 10 ] During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the British Crown began to assume an increasingly large role in the affairs of the company. A series of acts of Parliament were passed, including the Regulating Act 1773 , East India Company Act 1784 and the Charter Act 1813 which regulated the company's affairs and established the sovereignty of the Crown over the territories that it had acquired. [ 11 ] The company's eventual end was precipitated by the Indian Rebellion in 1857, a conflict that had begun with the mutiny of sepoys, Indian troops under British officers and discipline. [ 12 ] The rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides. The following year the British government dissolved the company and assumed direct control over India through the Government of India Act 1858 , establishing the British Raj , where an appointed governor-general administered India and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India . [ 13 ] India became the empire's most valuable possession, "the Jewel in the Crown", and was the most important source of Britain's strength. [ 14 ] A series of serious crop failures in the late 19th century led to widespread famines on the subcontinent in which it is estimated that over 15 million people died. The East India Company had failed to implement any coordinated policy to deal with the famines during its period of rule. Later, under direct British rule, commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect. [ 15 ] New Zealand Main article: Colony of New Zealand On each of his three voyages to the Pacific between 1769 and 1777, James Cook visited New Zealand. He was followed by an assortment of Europeans and Americans which including whalers, sealers, escaped convicts from New South Wales, missionaries and adventurers. Initially, contact with the indigenous Māori people was limited to the trading of goods, although interaction increased during the early decades of the 19th century with many trading and missionary stations being set up, especially in the north. The first of several Church of England missionaries arrived in 1814 and as well as their missionary role, they soon become the only form of European authority in a land that was not subject to British jurisdiction: the closest authority being the New South Wales governor in Sydney. The sale of weapons to Māori resulted from 1818 on in the intertribal warfare of the Musket Wars , with devastating consequences for the Māori population. [ 16 ] The UK government finally decided to act, dispatching Captain William Hobson with instructions to take formal possession after obtaining native consent. There was no central Māori authority able to represent all New Zealand so, on 6 February 1840, Hobson and many Māori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi in the Bay of Islands; most other chiefs signing in stages over the following months. [ 17 ] William Hobson declared British sovereignty over all New Zealand on 21 May 1840, over the North Island by cession and over the South Island by discovery (the island was sparsely populated and deemed terra nullius ). Hobson became Lieutenant-Governor, subject to Governor Sir George Gipps in Sydney, [ 18 ] with British possession of New Zealand initially administered from Australia as a dependency of the New South Wales colony. From 16 June 1840 New South Wales laws applied in New Zealand. [ 19 ] This transitional arrangement ended with the Charter for Erecting the Colony of New Zealand on 16 November 1840. The Charter stated that New Zealand would be established as a separate Crown colony on 3 May 1841 with Hobson as its governor. [ 20 ] Rivalry with Russia Main article: The Great Game British cavalry charging against Russian forces at Balaclava in 1854 During the 19th century, Britain and the Russian Empire vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the declining Ottoman Empire , Qajar dynasty and Qing dynasty . This rivalry in Central Asia came to be known as the "Great Game". [ 21 ] As far as Britain was concerned, defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkey demonstrated its imperial ambitions and capabilities and stoked fears in Britain of an overland invasion of India. [ 22 ] In 1839, Britain moved to pre-empt this by invading Afghanistan , but the First Anglo-Afghan War was a disaster for Britain. [ 23 ] When Russia invaded the Ottoman Balkans in 1853, fears of Russian dominance in the Mediterranean and the Middle East led Britain and France to enter the war in support of the Ottoman Empire and invade the Crimean Peninsula to destroy Russian naval capabilities. [ 23 ] The ensuing Crimean War (1854–1856), which involved new techniques of modern warfare , [ 24 ] was the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial power during the Pax Britannica and was a resounding defeat for Russia. [ 23 ] The situation remained unresolved in Central Asia for two more decades, with Britain annexing Baluchistan in 1876 and Russia annexing Kirghizia , Kazakhstan , and Turkmenistan . For a while, it appeared that another war would be inevitable, but the two countries reached an agreement on their respective spheres of influence in the region in 1878 and on all outstanding matters in 1907 with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente . [ 25 ] The destruction of the Imperial Russian Navy by the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 limited its threat to the British. [ 26 ] Cape to Cairo Main articles: History of South Africa (1815–1910) , History of Egypt under the British , and Scramble for Africa The Rhodes Colossus — Cecil Rhodes spanning "Cape to Cairo" The Dutch East India Company had founded the Dutch Cape Colony on the southern tip of Africa in 1652 as a way station for its ships travelling to and from its colonies in the East Indies . Britain formally acquired the colony, and its large Afrikaner (or Boer ) population in 1806, having occupied it in 1795 to prevent its falling into French hands during the Flanders Campaign . [ 27 ] British immigration to the Cape Colony began to rise after 1820, and pushed thousands of Boers , resentful of British rule, northwards to found their own—mostly short-lived— independent republics , during the Great Trek of the late 1830s and early 1840s. [ 28 ] In the process the Voortrekkers clashed repeatedly with the British, who had their own agenda with regard to colonial expansion in South Africa and to the various native African polities, including those of the Sotho people and the Zulu Kingdom . Eventually, the Boers established two republics that had a longer lifespan: the South African Republic or Transvaal Republic (1852–1877; 1881–1902) and the Orange Free State (1854–1902). [ 29 ] In 1902 Britain occupied both republics, concluding a treaty with the two Boer Republics following the Second Boer War (1899–1902). [ 30 ] In 1869 the Suez Canal opened under Napoleon III , linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean. Initially the Canal was opposed by the British; [ 31 ] but once opened, its strategic value was quickly recognised and became the "jugular vein of the Empire". [ 32 ] In 1875, the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Isma'il Pasha 's 44 per cent shareholding in the Suez Canal for £4 million (equivalent to £400 million in 2025). Although this did not grant outright control of the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882. [ 33 ] Although Britain controlled the Khedivate of Egypt into the 20th century, it was officially a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and not part of the British Empire. The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position, [ 34 ] but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople , which made the Canal officially neutral territory. [ 35 ] With competitive French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region undermining orderly colonisation of tropical Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 was held to regulate the competition between the European powers in what was called the " Scramble for Africa " by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims. [ 36 ] The scramble continued into the 1890s, and caused Britain to reconsider its decision in 1885 to withdraw from Sudan . A joint force of British and Egyptian troops defeated the Mahdist Army in 1896 and rebuffed an attempted French invasion at Fashoda in 1898. Sudan was nominally made an Anglo-Egyptian condominium , but a British colony in reality. [ 37 ] British gains in Southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes , pioneer of British expansion in Southern Africa, to urge a " Cape to Cairo " railway linking the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich south of the continent. [ 38 ] During the 1880s and 1890s, Rhodes, with his privately owned British South Africa Company , occupied and annexed territories named after him, Rhodesia . [ 39 ] Changing status of the white colonies Main articles: Dominions , Canadian Confederation , Federation of Australia , Irish Home Rule movement , and Independence of New Zealand A British Empire flag combining the arms of the dominions to represent their growing significance The path to independence for the white colonies of the British Empire began with the 1839 Durham Report , which proposed unification and self-government for Upper and Lower Canada, as a solution to political unrest which had erupted in armed rebellions in 1837. [ 40 ] This began with the passing of the Act of Union in 1840, which created the Province of Canada . Responsible government was first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other British North American colonies. With the passage of the British North America Act, 1867 by the British Parliament , the Province of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formed into Canada, a confederation enjoying full self-government with the exception of international relations . [ 41 ] Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901 . [ 42 ] The term "dominion status" was officially introduced at the 1907 Imperial Conference . [ 43 ] As the dominions gained greater autonomy, they would come to be recognised as distinct realms of the empire with unique customs and symbols of their own. Imperial identity, through imagery such as patriotic artworks and banners, began developing into a form that attempted to be more inclusive by showcasing the empire as a family of newly birthed nations with common roots. [ 44 ] [ 45 ] The last decades of the 19th century saw concerted political campaigns for Irish home rule . Ireland had been united with Britain into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the Act of Union 1800 after the Irish Rebellion of 1798 , and had suffered a severe famine between 1845 and 1852. Home rule was supported by the British prime minister, William Gladstone , who hoped that Ireland might follow in Canada's footsteps as a Dominion within the empire, but his 1886 Home Rule bill was defeated in Parliament. Although the bill, if passed, would have granted Ireland less autonomy within the UK than the Canadian provinces had within their own federation, [ 46 ] many MPs feared that a partially independent Ireland might pose a security threat to Great Britain or mark the beginning of the break-up of the empire. [ 47 ] A second Home Rule bill was defeated for similar reasons. [ 47 ] A third bill was passed by Parliament in 1914, but not implemented because of the outbreak of the First World War leading to the 1916 Easter Rising . [ 48 ] ^ Hyam 2002 , p. 1; Smith 1998 , p. 71. ^ Parsons 1999 , p. 3. ^ a b Porter 1998 , p. 401. ^ Porter 1998 , p. 332; Johnston & Reisman 2008 , pp. 508–510; Sondhaus 2004 , p. 9. ^ Lee 1994 , pp. 254–257. ^ Cite error: The named reference Porter 1998 8 was invoked but never defined (see the help page ). ^ Dalziel 2006 , pp. 88–91. ^ Mori 2014 , p. 178. ^ Martin 2007 , pp. 146–148. ^ Janin 1999 , p. 28. ^ Keay 1991 , p. 393. ^ Parsons 1999 , pp. 44–46. ^ Smith 1998 , pp. 50–57. ^ Brown 1998 , p. 5. ^ Marshall 1996 , pp. 133–134. ^ "Musket Wars" . NZ History . Ministry for Culture and Heritage). 2021. Archived from the original on 22 July 2024 . Retrieved 2 November 2024 . ^ Smith 1998 , p. 45; Porter 1998 , p. 579; Mein Smith 2005 , p. 49; "Waitangi Day" . nzhistory.govt.nz . New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage . Archived from the original on 20 December 2008 . Retrieved 13 December 2008 . . ^ Moon 2007 , p. 48. ^ "Crown colony era" . NZ History . Ministry for Culture and Heritage. Archived from the original on 15 September 2023 . Retrieved 2 November 2024 . ^ Moon 2010 , p. 66. ^ Hopkirk 1992 , pp. 1–12. ^ James 2001 , p. 181. ^ a b c James 2001 , p. 182. ^ Royle 2000 , preface. ^ Williams 1966 , pp. 360–373. ^ Hodge 2007 , p. 47. ^ Smith 1998 , p. 85. ^ Smith 1998 , pp. 85–86. ^ Lloyd 1996 , pp. 168, 186, 243. ^ Lloyd 1996 , p. 255. ^ Tilby 2009 , p. 256. ^ Louis 1986 , p. 718. ^ Ferguson 2002 , pp. 230–233. ^ James 2001 , p. 274. ^ "Treaties" . Egypt Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Archived from the original on 15 September 2010 . Retrieved 20 October 2010 . ^ Herbst 2000 , pp. 71–72. ^ Vandervort 1998 , pp. 169–183. ^ James 2001 , p. 298. ^ Lloyd 1996 , p. 215. ^ Smith 1998 , pp. 28–29. ^ Porter 1998 , p. 187. ^ Smith 1998 , p. 30. ^ Rhodes, Wanna & Weller 2009 , pp. 5–15. ^ Kelly, Ralph (8 August 2017). "A Flag for the Empire" (PDF) . The Flag Institute . Archived (PDF) from the original on 13 August 2023 . Retrieved 13 August 2023 . ^ Ford, Lisa (2021). The King's Peace: Law and Order in the British Empire . Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England: Harvard University Press. ISBN   978-0-6742-4907-3 . ^ Lloyd 1996 , p. 213. ^ a b James 2001 , p. 315. ^ Smith 1998 , p. 92. Read more on Wikipedia →

Decolonisation and decline (1945–1997) Further information: Decolonization 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 in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, who now held the balance of global power. [ 1 ] Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a US$3.75 billion loan from the United States, [ 2 ] [ 3 ] the last installment of which was repaid in 2006. [ 4 ] 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. In principle, both nations were opposed to European colonialism. [ 5 ] In practice, American anti-communism prevailed over anti-imperialism , and therefore the United States supported the continued existence of the British Empire to keep Communist expansion in check. [ 6 ] At first, British politicians believed it would be possible to maintain Britain's role as a world power at the head of a re-imagined Commonwealth, [ 7 ] but by 1960 they were forced to recognise that there was an irresistible " wind of change " blowing. Their priorities changed to maintaining an extensive zone of British influence [ 8 ] and ensuring that stable, non-Communist governments were established in former colonies. [ 9 ] In this context, while other European powers such as France and Portugal waged costly and unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact, Britain generally adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies, although violence occurred in Malaya , Kenya and Palestine . [ 10 ] Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to 5 million, 3 million of whom were in Hong Kong. [ 11 ] Initial disengagement Main articles: Partition of India , 1947–1949 Palestine war , and Malayan Emergency About 14.5 million people lost their homes as a result of the partition of India in 1947. 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: Indian independence . [ 12 ] India's major political party—the Indian National Congress (led by Mahatma Gandhi )—had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed with Muslim League (led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah ) as to how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified secular Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate Islamic state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest led Attlee to promise independence no later than 30 June 1948. When the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent, the newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten , hastily brought forward the date to 15 August 1947. [ 13 ] 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 . [ 14 ] The princely states were provided with a choice to either remain independent or join India or Pakistan. [ 15 ] Millions of Hindus & Sikhs crossed from Pakistan to India and Muslims vice versa, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma , which had been administered as part of British India until 1937, gained independence the following year in 1948 along with Sri Lanka (formerly known as British Ceylon ). India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka became members of the Commonwealth, while Burma chose not to join. [ 16 ] That same year, the British Nationality Act was enacted, in hopes of strengthening and unifying the Commonwealth: it provided British citizenship and right of entry to all those living within its jurisdiction. [ 17 ] The British Mandate in Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India. [ 18 ] The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following the Holocaust , while Arabs were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. Frustrated by the intractability of the problem, attacks by Jewish paramilitary organisations and the increasing cost of maintaining its military presence, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve. [ 19 ] The UN General Assembly subsequently voted for a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. It was immediately followed by the outbreak of a civil war between the Arabs and Jews of Palestine, and British forces withdrew amid the fighting. The British Mandate for Palestine officially terminated at midnight on 15 May 1948 as the State of Israel declared independence and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War broke out, during which the territory of the former Mandate became divided between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. Amid the fighting, British forces continued to withdraw from Israel, with the last British troops departing from Haifa on 30 June 1948. [ 20 ] Following the surrender 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. [ 21 ] The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malaysian 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. [ 21 ] The Malayan Emergency , as it was called, 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 North Borneo joined to form Malaysia , but in 1965 Chinese-majority Singapore was expelled from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations and became an independent city-state. [ 22 ] Brunei , which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union. [ 23 ] Suez and its aftermath Main article: Suez Crisis Eden 's decision to invade Egypt in 1956 revealed Britain's post-war weaknesses. In the 1951 general election , the Conservative Party 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. 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 be granted self-determination by 1955, with independence to follow [ 24 ] Sudan was granted independence on 1 January 1956. [ 25 ] In July 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of Anthony Eden , who had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, 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. [ 26 ] Eden infuriated US President Dwight D. Eisenhower by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion. [ 27 ] Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after it 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. [ 28 ] Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objectives, [ 29 ] UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned. [ 30 ] [ 31 ] The Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage and its end as a first-rate power, [ 32 ] [ 33 ] demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States. [ 34 ] The events at Suez wounded British national pride , leading one Member of Parliament (MP) to describe it as "Britain's Waterloo " [ 35 ] and another to suggest that the country had become an "American satellite ". [ 36 ] Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen Britain's political leaders after Suez where they "went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing", from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982. [ 37 ] While the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse. [ 38 ] Britain again deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman ( 1957 ), Jordan ( 1958 ) and Kuwait ( 1961 ), though on these occasions with American approval, [ 39 ] as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan 's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States. [ 35 ] Although Britain granted Kuwait independence in 1961, it continued to maintain a military presence in the Middle East for another decade. On 16 January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound , Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Defence Secretary Denis Healey announced that British Armed Forces troops would be withdrawn from major military bases East of Suez , which included the ones in the Middle East, and primarily from Malaysia and Singapore by the end of 1971, instead of 1975 as earlier planned. [ 40 ] By that time over 50,000 British military personnel were still stationed in the Far East, including 30,000 in Singapore. [ 41 ] The British granted independence to the Maldives in 1965 but continued to station a garrison there until 1976, withdrew from Aden in 1967, and granted independence to Bahrain , Qatar , and the United Arab Emirates in 1971. [ 42 ] Wind of change Main articles: Decolonisation of Africa and Decolonization of Asia Further information: Wind of Change (speech) 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 recognised independence. Macmillan gave a speech in Cape Town , South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of "the wind of change blowing through this continent". [ 43 ] Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria , and under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly. [ 44 ] 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 during the 1960s. [ 45 ] Owing to the rapid pace of decolonisation during this period, the cabinet post of Secretary of State for the Colonies was abolished in 1966, along with the Colonial Office , which merged with the Commonwealth Relations Office to form the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (now the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office ) in October 1968. [ 46 ] Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia , were all granted independence by 1968. British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process. From 1952 the Kenya Colony saw the eight-year long Mau Mau rebellion , in which tens of thousands of suspected rebels were interned by the colonial government in detention camps to suppress the rebellion and over 1000 convicts executed, with records systematically destroyed. [ 47 ] [ 48 ] Throughout the 1960s, the British government took a " No independence until majority rule " policy towards decolonising the empire, leading the white minority government of Southern Rhodesia to enact the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain, resulting in a civil war that lasted until the British-mediated Lancaster House Agreement of 1979. [ 49 ] The agreement saw the British Empire temporarily re-establish the Colony of Southern Rhodesia from 1979 to 1980 as a transitionary government to a majority rule Republic of Zimbabwe . This was the last British possession in Africa. In Cyprus , a guerrilla war waged by the Greek Cypriot organisation EOKA against British rule, was ended in 1959 by the London and Zürich Agreements , which resulted in Cyprus being granted independence in 1960. The UK retained the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia as sovereign base areas. The Mediterranean colony of Malta was amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964 and became the country of Malta , though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain . [ 50 ] Most of the UK's Caribbean 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 largest members. [ 51 ] Jamaica attained independence in 1962, as did Trinidad and Tobago . Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands, including the Bahamas , in the 1970s and 1980s, [ 51 ] but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence. [ 52 ] The British Virgin Islands , [ 53 ] The Cayman Islands and Montserrat opted to retain ties with Britain, [ 54 ] while Guyana achieved independence 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. [ 55 ] British Overseas Territories in the Pacific acquired independence in the 1970s beginning with Fiji in 1970 and ending with Vanuatu in 1980. Vanuatu's independence was delayed because of political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France. [ 56 ] Fiji, Papua New Guinea , Solomon Islands and Tuvalu became Commonwealth realms . [ 57 ] End of empire See also: Falklands War , Handover of Hong Kong , and Patriation By 1981, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts, the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve in defending 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 . [ 58 ] Britain's successful military response to retake the Falkland Islands during the ensuing Falklands War contributed to reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world power. [ 59 ] The 1980s saw Canada, Australia, and New Zealand sever their final constitutional links with Britain. Although granted legislative independence by the Statute of Westminster 1931 , vestigial constitutional links had remained in place. The British Parliament retained the power to amend key Canadian constitutional statutes, meaning that an act of the British Parliament was required to make certain changes to the Canadian Constitution . [ 60 ] The British Parliament had the power to pass laws extending to Canada at Canadian request. Although no longer able to pass any laws that would apply to Australian Commonwealth law, the British Parliament retained the power to legislate for the individual Australian states . With regard to New Zealand, the British Parliament retained the power to pass legislation applying to New Zealand with the New Zealand Parliament 's consent. In 1982, the last legal link between Canada and Britain was severed by the Canada Act 1982 , which was passed by the British parliament, formally patriating the Canadian Constitution. The act ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution. [ 61 ] Similarly, the Australia Act 1986 (effective 3 March 1986) severed the constitutional link between Britain and the Australian states, while New Zealand's Constitution Act 1986 (effective 1 January 1987) reformed the constitution of New Zealand to sever its constitutional link with Britain. [ 62 ] On 1 January 1984, Brunei, Britain's last remaining Asian protectorate, was granted full independence. [ 63 ] Independence had been delayed due to the opposition of the Sultan , who had preferred British protection. [ 64 ] In September 1982 the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher , travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese Communist government, on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong. [ 65 ] Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1860 Convention of Peking , Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula had been respectively ceded to Britain in perpetuity , but the majority of the colony consisted of the New Territories , which had been acquired under a 99-year lease in 1898 , due to expire in 1997. [ 66 ] 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. [ 67 ] 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 . [ 68 ] The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many, [ 69 ] including King Charles III, then Prince of Wales, who was in attendance, "the end of Empire", though many British territories that are remnants of the empire still remain. [ 61 ] ^ Abernethy 2000 , p. 146. ^ Brown 1998 , p. 331. ^ Rosenson, Alex (1947). "The Terms of the Anglo-American Financial Agreement" . The American Economic Review . 37 (1): 178– 187. ISSN   0002-8282 . JSTOR   1802868 . Archived from the original on 14 January 2024 . Retrieved 26 December 2023 . ^ "What's a little debt between friends?" . BBC News . 10 May 2006. Archived from the original on 10 June 2010 . Retrieved 20 November 2008 . ^ Davis, Kenneth C. (2003). Don't Know Much About History: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (1st ed.). New York: HarperCollins . pp. 321, 341. 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Legacy See also: Anglicisation The fourteen British Overseas Territories Britain retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles. In 1983, the British Nationality Act 1981 renamed the existing Crown Colonies as "British Dependent Territories", [ a ] and in 2002 they were renamed the British Overseas Territories . [ 3 ] Most former British colonies and protectorates are members of the Commonwealth of Nations , a voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2.2 billion people. [ 4 ] The United Kingdom and 14 other countries, all collectively known as the Commonwealth realms , voluntarily continue to share the same person—King Charles III —as their respective head of state. These 15 nations are distinct and equal legal entities: the United Kingdom , Australia , Canada , New Zealand , Antigua and Barbuda , The Bahamas , Belize , Grenada , Jamaica , Papua New Guinea , Saint Kitts and Nevis , Saint Lucia , Saint Vincent and the Grenadines , Solomon Islands and Tuvalu . [ 5 ] American and British interactions shaped the British Empire's breakup and resulting world order [ 6 ] During the colonial era, education systems emphasised the study of the classical Greco-Roman heritage and resultant experience with empire, aiming to parse how to apply that heritage to improve the future of Britain's colonies. [ 7 ] American hegemony , which throughout its early rise had challenged British claims of being the " New Rome ", [ 8 ] became the successor to British dominance in the mid-20th century; the two countries' historical ties and wartime collaboration supported a peaceful handoff of power after World War II . [ 9 ] As for the United Kingdom itself, British views of the former Empire are more positive than is the case in other post-imperial nations; [ 10 ] discourse around the former Empire has continued to impact Britons' present-day understanding of themselves, as seen in the debate leading up to its decision to leave the European Union in 2016. [ 11 ] Empire shaped habits, mentality, psychology, attitudes and ethnic makeup in post-Empire Britain. [ 12 ] [ 13 ] Decades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and migration have left their mark on the independent countries that arose from the British Empire. The empire established the use of the English language in regions around the world . As of 2008 [update] English is the primary language of up to 460 million people and is spoken by about 1.5 billion as a first, second or foreign language. [ 14 ] It has also significantly influenced other languages. [ 15 ] The British exported individual and team sports developed in Britain , particularly football , cricket , lawn tennis , and golf. [ 16 ] Some sports were also invented or standardised in the former colonies, such as badminton, polo , and snooker in India (see also: Sport in British India ). [ 17 ] British missionaries who travelled around the globe – often in advance of soldiers and civil servants – spread Protestantism (including Anglicanism ) to all continents. The British Empire provided refuge for religiously persecuted continental Europeans for hundreds of years. [ 18 ] British educational institutions remain popular in the present day, in part due to the importance of the English language and similarity of British curricula to those in the former colonies. [ 19 ] Cricket being played in South Asia, where it has become popular . Several sports developed in Britain or in the former empire continue to be viewed and played. Political boundaries drawn by the British did not always reflect homogeneous ethnicities or religions, contributing to conflicts in formerly colonised areas, such as Nigeria and the Indian sub-continent. The British Empire fostered large migrations of peoples (see also: Commonwealth diaspora ). Millions left the British Isles , with the founding settler-colonist populations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand coming largely from Britain and Ireland. Millions of people moved between British colonies, with large numbers of South Asian people emigrating to other parts of the empire, such as Malaysia and Fiji, and Overseas Chinese people moving to Malaysia, Singapore and the Caribbean; [ 20 ] about half of all modern immigration to the Commonwealth nations continues to occur between them. [ 21 ] The demographics of the United Kingdom changed after the Second World War owing to immigration to Britain from remaining and former British colonies. [ 22 ] In the 19th century, innovation in Britain led to revolutionary changes in manufacturing, the development of factory systems , and the growth of transportation by railway and steamship. [ 23 ] Debate has occurred as to what extent the Industrial Revolution , originating from the United Kingdom, was facilitated by or dependent on imperialism. [ 24 ] British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway-stations and government buildings, survives in many cities that were once part of the British Empire; [ 25 ] Western technologies and architecture had been globalised in part due to the Empire's military and administrative requirements. [ 26 ] Integration of former colonies into the global economy was also a major legacy of empire. [ 27 ] The British choice of system of measurement, the imperial system , continues in use in some countries in various ways. The convention of driving on the left-hand side of the road prevails in much of the former empire. [ 28 ] The Westminster system of parliamentary democracy has served as the template for the governments of many former colonies, [ 29 ] [ 30 ] as was English common law for legal systems. [ 31 ] It has been observed that almost every former colony that emerged as an independent democratic state is a former British colony, [ 32 ] though this correlation greatly declines in strength after 30 years of an ex-colony's independence. [ 33 ] International commercial contracts are often based on English common law. [ 34 ] The British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council still serves as the highest court of appeal for twelve former colonies. [ 35 ] Interpretations of Empire Historians' approaches to understanding the British Empire are diverse and evolving. [ 36 ] Important elements debated over recent decades have included the impact of post-colonial studies , which seek to critically re-evaluate the history of imperialism, and the continued relevance of historians Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher , whose work greatly influenced imperial historiography during the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, differing assessments of the empire's legacy remain relevant to debates over recent history and politics, such as the Anglo-American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan , as well as Britain's role and identity in the contemporary world. [ 37 ] [ 38 ] Historians such as Caroline Elkins have argued against perceptions of the British Empire as a primarily liberalising and modernising enterprise, criticising its widespread use of violence and emergency laws to maintain power. [ 38 ] [ 39 ] Common criticisms of the empire include the use of detention camps in its colonies, massacres of indigenous peoples , [ 40 ] and famine-response policies. [ 41 ] [ 42 ] Some scholars, including Amartya Sen , assert that British policies worsened the famines in India that killed millions during British rule. [ 43 ] Conversely, historians such as Niall Ferguson calculate that the economic and institutional development the British Empire brought resulted in a net benefit to its colonies. [ 44 ] Other historians treat its legacy as varied and ambiguous. [ 38 ] Public attitudes towards the empire within 21st-century Britain have been broadly positive, although sentiment towards the Commonwealth has been one of apathy and decline. [ 42 ] [ 45 ] [ 46 ] ^ "British Nationality Act 1981, Schedule 6" . legislation.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 1 April 2019 . Retrieved 18 March 2019 . ^ "The British Nationality Act 1981 (Commencement) Order 1982" . legislation.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 1 April 2019 . 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Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony . Harvard University Press. doi : 10.2307/j.ctv24w62xt . ISBN   978-0-674-97507-1 . JSTOR   j.ctv24w62xt . Archived from the original on 26 May 2025 . Retrieved 8 January 2025 . ^ "Britain misses its empire more than other major post-colonial powers, poll finds" . The Independent . Archived from the original on 20 January 2025 . Retrieved 8 January 2025 . ^ Foley, James (30 August 2023). "Race, nation, empire? Historicising outward and inward-facing British nationalism" . International Relations . 39 (4) 00471178231196073. doi : 10.1177/00471178231196073 . ISSN   0047-1178 . ^ Sanghera, Sathnam (28 January 2021). Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain . Penguin UK. ISBN   9780241445334 . 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ISSN   0013-8266 . ^ a b c Rana, Mitter (17 March 2022). "Legacy of Violence — the bloody ends of empire" . Financial Times . Archived from the original on 10 December 2022 . Retrieved 29 June 2022 . ^ Elkins, Caroline (2022). Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire . Knopf Doubleday Publishing. pp.  14– 16, 680. ISBN   978-0-3072-7242-3 . ^ Howe, Stephen (2010). "Colonising and Exterminating? Memories of Imperial Violence in Britain and France". Histoire Politique . 11 (2): 13– 15. doi : 10.3917/hp.011.0012 . ^ Sheldon, Richard (2009). "Development, Poverty & Famines: The Case of British Empire". In Duffield, Mark; Hewitt, Vernon (eds.). Empire, Development and Colonialism: The Past in the Present . Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer. pp.  74– 87. ISBN   978-1-8470-1011-7 . JSTOR   10.7722/j.ctt81pqr.10 . ^ a b Stone, Jon (21 January 2016). "British people are proud of colonialism and the British Empire, poll finds" . The Independent . Archived from the original on 28 June 2022 . Retrieved 28 June 2022 . ^ Sen, Amartya . Development as Freedom . ISBN   978-0-3857-2027-4 ch 7 ^ Ferguson, Niall (3 June 2004). "Niall Ferguson: What the British Empire did for the world" . The Independent . Archived from the original on 29 June 2022 . Retrieved 29 June 2022 . ^ Booth, Robert (11 March 2020). "UK more nostalgic for empire than other ex-colonial powers" . The Guardian . Archived from the original on 25 June 2022 . Retrieved 29 June 2022 . ^ Cite error: The named reference :2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page ). Cite error: There are <ref group=lower-alpha> tags or {{efn}} templates on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=lower-alpha}} template or {{notelist}} template (see the help page ). Read more on Wikipedia →