British Empire, a worldwide system ofdependencies—colonies,protectorates, and other territories—that over a span of some three centuries was brought under thesovereignty of the crown ofGreat Britain and the administration of the British government. The policy of granting or recognizing significant degrees of self-government by dependencies, which was favored by the far-flung nature of theempire, led to the development by the 20th century of the notion of a “British Commonwealth,”comprising largely self-governing dependencies that acknowledged an increasingly symbolic Britishsovereignty. The term Commonwealth was embodied in statute in 1931. Today theCommonwealth includes former elements of the British Empire in a free association ofsovereign states.

Origins of the British Empire

Great Britain made its first tentative efforts to establish overseas settlements in the 16th century. Maritime expansion, driven by commercial ambitions and by competition withFrance, accelerated in the 17th century and resulted in the establishment of settlements inNorth America and theWest Indies. By 1670 there were British American colonies inNew England,Virginia, andMaryland and settlements in the Bermudas,Honduras,Antigua,Barbados, andNova Scotia.Jamaica was obtained by conquest in 1655, and theHudson’s Bay Company established itself in what became northwesternCanada from the 1670s on. TheEast India Company began establishing trading posts inIndia in 1600, and theStraits Settlements (Penang,Singapore,Malacca, andLabuan) became British through anextension of that company’s activities. The first permanent British settlement on theAfrican continent was made at James Island in theGambia River in 1661.Slave trading had begun earlier inSierra Leone, but that region did not become a British possession until 1787.Britain acquired theCape of Good Hope (now inSouth Africa) in 1806, and the South African interior was opened up byBoer and British pioneers under British control.

Nearly all these early settlements arose from the enterprise of particular companies and magnates rather than from any effort on the part of the English crown. The crown exercised some rights of appointment and supervision, but the colonies were essentially self-managing enterprises. The formation of the empire was thus an unorganized process based onpiecemeal acquisition, sometimes with the British government being the least willing partner in the enterprise.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the crown exercised control over its colonies chiefly in the areas of trade and shipping. In accordance with themercantilist philosophy of the time, the colonies were regarded as a source of necessary raw materials forEngland and were grantedmonopolies for their products, such astobacco andsugar, in the British market. In return, they were expected to conduct all their trade by means of English ships and to serve as markets for British manufactured goods. TheNavigation Act of 1651 andsubsequent acts set up a closed economy between Britain and its colonies; all colonial exports had to be shipped on English ships to the British market, and all colonial imports had to come by way of England. This arrangement lasted until the combined effects of the Scottish economistAdam Smith’sThe Wealth of Nations (1776), theloss of the American colonies, and the growth of afree-trade movement in Britain slowly brought it to an end in the first half of the 19th century.

Thetransatlantic trade in enslaved people took on considerable importance to Britain’s colonial economy in the Americas, and it became an economic necessity for the Caribbean colonies and for the southern parts of the futureUnited States. Movements for theend of slavery came to fruition in British colonial possessions long before the similar movement in the United States; the trade was abolished in 1807 and slavery itself in Britain’s dominionsin 1833.

Competition with France

British military and naval power, under the leadership of such men asRobert Clive,James Wolfe, andEyre Coote, gained for Britain two of the most important parts of its empire—Canada andIndia. Fighting between the British and French colonies in North America wasendemic in the first half of the 18th century, but theTreaty of Paris of 1763, which ended theSeven Years’ War (known as theFrench and Indian War in North America), left Britain dominant in Canada. In India, theEast India Company was confronted by the FrenchCompagnie des Indes, butRobert Clive’s military victories against the French and the rulers ofBengal in the 1750s provided the British with a massive accession of territory and ensured their future supremacy in India.

The loss of Britain’s 13American colonies in 1776–83 was compensated by new settlements inAustralia from 1788 and by the spectacular growth ofUpper Canada (nowOntario) after the emigration of loyalists from what had become the United States. TheNapoleonic Wars provided further additions to the empire; theTreaty of Amiens (1802) made Trinidad and Ceylon (nowSri Lanka) officially British, and in the Treaty of Paris (1814) FrancecededTobago,Mauritius,Saint Lucia, andMalta.Malacca joined the empire in 1795, and SirStamford Raffles acquiredSingapore in 1819. Canadian settlements inAlberta,Manitoba, andBritish Columbia extended British influence to the Pacific, while further British conquests in India brought in theUnited Provinces of Agra and Oudh and the Central Provinces, East Bengal, and Assam.

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