THE EMPIRE

Defining the start and finish for the dates of the British Empire has not been an easy task. It is
generally divided into two distinct Empires. The First Empire revolved primarily, but not
exclusively, around the settler colonies of the Americas. These would be termed the Thirteen
Colonies and would gain their independence from Britain in 1783. The Second Empire then
developed from the remnants of the First - particularly India - and were added to during the
Napoleonic Wars and then throughout the nineteenth century and even into the beginning of the
twentieth century. It is this Second, predominantly Victorian, Empire that most people associate
with the British Empire. Convenient bookends are 1497 to 1997, five hundred years. The first date
marks the very first overseas 'English' colony of Newfoundland claimed as they sought a route to
the riches of the Orient through a hoped for North-West Passage. The 1997 date represents the
British withdrawing from their last sizeable and economically significant colony of Hong Kong.
This date is a little more arbitrary in that there are just over a dozen territories still directly governed
by Britain scattered across the globe. The Falkland Islands represent the biggest of these remaining
colonies and the 1982 Falklands War was certainly the last colonial war. It is actually said that the
British territories are still scattered enough around the world that the sun still does not technically
set on the British Empire. Of course, the British Empire expanded and contracted wildly over the
years. It became fairly large with the ever expanding American colonies in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries, particularly after the defeat of the French in the Seven Years War. The
American Revolution lost much of this territory, but the expansion of British interests in India filled
this vacuum. It really was the victory in the Napoleonic Wars that allowed the British to hoover up
naval bases and create toe-holds across the world. These would generally provide the jumping off
points for the massive expansion in the Victorian period. Advances in medicine, transport and
communication systems helped make even more of the world accessible with Africa providing the
last spur to European Imperialism in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century. World War One
appeared to add yet more colonies to the British Empire in the form of mandates. The year 1924
was a territorial highpoint of Empire - although economically the Empire would begin to enter its
period of decline in this Inter-war years period. But it was still estimated at this time to cover
between a quarter and a third of the globe and that it represented an area of over one hundred and
fifty times the size of Great Britain itself. The Second World War would see much imperial territory
threatened or temporarily lost. Despite being on the winning side, the Empire would not recover
from the geo-political shifts caused by this Second World War and would enter into a period of
terminal decline. India was the first and largest area to be shed and then the Middle East and then
Africa. Various Caribbean and Pacific possessions held on a little longer but most of these also
went their separate way. The last of the major colonies to be lost was that of Hong Kong in 1997.

Theories of Empire

Historians have long debated how and why the British were able to amass such a formidable and
expansive empire in the years since 1497. And why were the British able to supplant the Portugese,
Dutch and Spanish Empires in the Seventeenth and eighteenth Centuries and effectively see off
French, Russian and German challenges over the nineteenth and early twentieth Centuries? These
debates still rage and there is no definitive answer. Some of the more commonly stated reasons are
explained below.

Christianity, Commerce and Civilization

This was a popular combination of factors given for the rise of the British Empire in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth Centuries. The Protestant aspect of Christianity was seen by many
within the British Empire as part of the larger battle with the more 'Catholic' nations of Continental
Europe. Ever since the Reformation, religion represented not merely a spiritual difference between
the Catholic and Protestant churches but was part of a far larger cultural and political competition
between deadly rivals. Portugal, Spain and France were the Catholic nations who developed
successful commercial empires before the English were able to do so. Religion gave an excuse for
this commercial rivalry to turn into military and political competition. The very success of the
Protestant nations in challenging the Catholic hegemony in the New World and the East Indies
seemed to confirm that God might be on the Protestants' side after all - although this did ignore the
fact that the English and Dutch co-religionists were just as frequently found at the throats of one
another. It was certainly helpful that the Protestant work ethic meant that Christian and commercial
ideals could be reconciled fairly easily and in fact was thought to manifest itself in the improvement
and development of British civilization in general. In pre-industrial Britain, the combination of the
these three factors would lead to the creation of the settler colonies in North America. Devout
Christians would look for economic freedom from feudal relationships in this New World. However,
mercantilism and then the industrial revolution meant that this commercial aspect could take on a
more sinister role as monopoly power, slavery or exploitative working conditions became a
temptation hard for investors or capitalists to resist. It was reassuring to many such capitalists that
they could hide behind the idea that by investing in enterprises and schemes around the world that
they were serving a modernizing and civilizing goal and so their consciences could be clear in such a
noble enterprise. The civilization aspiration could be damaging in its own right. It assumed that
British civilization was innately superior to those it was subjugating. Indeed, the very subjugation
process confirmed the superiority of British civilization! It then assumed that the new rulers were
obliged to improve the subjugated peoples that it had taken under its wing with large doses of
Christianity and commerce. Of course, this appealed to the positive aspirations that many
Imperialists held for the future of a benign Empire. It offered a justification for Imperialism.
However, it could also justify some of the more extreme Social Darwinist ideas of racial superiority
and it allowed for treating the subject peoples as innately inferior. In summary, Christianity,
commerce and civilization was a neat way to justify the uniqueness of the British Empire and yet
give it a justification for continuing it into the future. It could also be deeply patronizing and justified
cultural imperialism and racial stereotyping.

Mercantilism

Mercantilism and chartered monopoly companies were becoming quite the fashion in the late
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It was a cheap and relatively easy way for a monarch to gain an
income on the back of his nation's prestige and maritime exploits. He could give permission to
explorers to claim lands on his behalf and then authorize certain companies to exploit the natural
resources in that part of the world in return for a fixed income to the monarch. He could provide
exclusive rights to certain companies in return for money, political support or promotion at home. It
invariably, but not always, resulted in ignoring the rights of any indigenous or local peoples that
were 'in the way'. If the political entity was too large and powerful then alliances might be entered
into or the monarch might lend the company the support of his nation's military wings. The Spanish
and Portuguese long used this system of government, and the French and Dutch followed suit. It was
to be no surprise that England would also follow this model - at least for a while. The Stuart
monarchs were particularly keen on this economic model - especially as it seemed to provide the
permanently cash-strapped Stuarts with much needed money. Over time though, problems did arise.
Companies were often more interested in making a profit than in taking care of the people it ruled
over. When rebellions or riots broke out, it was invariably the government who had to come to the
rescue as the company's resources would be quickly depleted by long, drawn out and expensive
campaigns. The famous 'East India Company' had to go cap in hand to the British Government to
save it from bankruptcy but not before many individual investors and directors had made fortunes.
They would sell their shares when it looked like trouble was looming - it was the small or
institutional shareholders who invariably got caught out - or the British taxpayer! Slavery would
show just how exploitative and morally bankrupt this system could descend to. Plantations needed
labour and labour was available, relatively cheaply, in West Africa. It was when slaves started
revolting and rising up in rebellions that questions were asked back in Britain - why precisely was
the government spending money and resources supporting slave owners against slaves? They had not
shared the profits in the 'good' years, why should British taxpayers support them now that they were
suffering? Surely it was their own problem? Non-conformist Christians in particular found it easier
to challenge the status quo of slavery when their moral arguments were joined by these no less tricky
economic ones.

Technological and Industrial Superiority

The British had no monopoly on technological innovation. Gunpowder, the printing press,
navigational equipment were all developed and improved on the continent or further afield yet.
Europe from the fifteenth century onwards was becoming a dynamic place where new ideas were
swirling around with unnatural haste. Britain was benefitting from this much wider European
Renaissance and Age of Enlightenment and yet it was also in a position to take these ideas, and
many others, much further as it would become the first nation to harness the power of steam which
in turn would unleash an Industrial Revolution and an avalanche of high quality, mass-produced
goods that would flood markets all around the world. They, in turn, would provide a technology gap
that non-European nations would find difficult to compete with. Precision-made muskets, rifles,
machine guns, train locomotives, steam ships would provide the relatively small and over-stretched
British armed forces with unparalleled advantages. They could take on vastly larger enemies and yet
beat them off, subdue and suppress them. British weaponry was very effective and its
communication systems allowed it to shepherd its meagre resources to devastating effect and even
its medical resources would improve enough to allow its soldiers and sailors to penetrate deeper and
more inaccessible areas. Britain was not the only nation to enjoy a technological advantage over
non-European nations, but its combination of industrial might, commercial prowess and maritime
power meant that it had a peculiar advantage and one that would not be challenged until the
development of guerilla warfare and tactics in the twentieth century.

Strategic Imperatives

Sir John Seeley once stated that the British Empire was acquired in a 'fit of absent-mindedness'.
What he meant by this was that the Empire was acquired for a variety of reasons that did not add up
to a coherent whole. He also had in mind the fact that new colonies were being added in order to
defend existing colonies and borders. The best example of this might be the colony of India. It was
certainly regarded as the Jewel in the Crown of the British Empire but it also meant that a surprising
number of supporting colonies would be added to guard the so-called 'Jewel' itself or the routes to
and from the Jewel. For example, the British were keen to take control of the Cape Colony from the
Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars to secure the main sea route to India. Likewise, islands like St.
Helena, Mauritius and the coastline of Aden were all added for similar reasons. Of course, when the
Suez Canal was opened in the 1869, it was not long before the British took a controlling interest in
the Suez Canal Company and soon became involved in controlling the Egyptian administration itself
as this new route to Asia displaced the Cape of Good Hope route. Then, once Egypt was a colony,
Sudan and Cyprus became part of the Empire. Even within India itself, British control was expanded
from coastal factories to dominate the interior and then becoming involved in acquiring the
Himalaya region to defend the approaches to India. There was a relentless logic to guarding the next
valley, river or island that soon got the British involved in places that had little strategic importance
except to the colonies that it already controlled.

Maritime Advantages

The Royal Navy would undoubtedly become a formidable military institution, but it was not always
inevitable that Britannia would rule the waves. Naturally, being an island nation, ship-building and
sailing would be important skills and industries to a country like England. But, Portugal and then
Spain had got off to a far more promising start with regards to maritime domination of the seas from
the fifteenth century onwards. They had come to understand the ship design, navigational and long
distance skills required to explore and commercially exploit the routes that they discovered. The
English were always playing catch up or were merely picking up the scraps left by the Portuguese
and Spanish. If anything, it was the Dutch and French who first challenged Portuguese and Spanish
control of the seas. This situation would not really be transformed until the eighteenth century. The
Glorious Revolution of 1688 where the Dutch King William of Orange took control of the English
Crown would reduce, but not remove, Anglo-Dutch rivalry. However, it would not be until the
Seven Years War of 1756 to 1763 that the Royal Navy would take on the far richer and supposedly
more powerful Kingdom of France. This was also something of a legacy of the Glorious Revolution
in that the Dutch brought sophisticated banking techniques that would allow the British to borrow
money to build a huge Navy. The idea of this investment was to pay back the loans once Britain had
been victorious in the war. The French Navy had no such infusion of investment and so they were
hard pressed to see off the challenge from the Royal Navy especially on the global scale of what was
really the first 'World War' in that it stretched over all corners of the globe. In some ways, the French
were able to get an element of revenge by helping the American Revolutionaries in the 1770s and
1780s in their humiliation of the British. But this in itself would be a false dawn for the French
Monarchy. They had invested huge quantities of money to challenge the Royal Navy but without the
benefit of receiving tangible assets to recoup this investment. It is not an understatement to say that
one of the prime reasons for France's own Revolution was because their cupboard was bare after
helping the American Revolutionaries. This of course would lead indirectly to the Napoleonic
struggles between France and Britain. Napoleon would concentrate on his land campaigns, but he
would be constantly frustrated or harassed by the Royal Navy. For example, Nelson destroyed
Napoleon's fleet at anchor off Egypt in 1798 which killed off his Pyramid Campaign. Napoleon
would try to combine the French and Spanish fleets to lure the Royal Navy across the Atlantic to
allow him to launch an invasion force against England. The resulting battle of Trafalgar in 1805
became the defining naval battle for the next century. The British did not fall for the lure and ended
up blockading the French and Spanish fleets instead. Once these fleets set sail, Nelson directed an
aggressive assault that would destroy them and leave the Royal Navy ruling the waves until World
War One and beyond. For the rest of the nineteenth century, there was no maritime power who could
come close to challenging British domination of the maritime communication and trade routes. This
meant that the British could hoover up all the outlying French, Spanish and Dutch colonies in the
remainder of the Napoleonic Wars and could then guarantee the safety of all of these isolated and far
flung outposts from at least maritime threats. Britannia really would rule the waves and this
undoubtedly made imperialism easier to implement and international trade to thrive which also aided
the industrializing Britain.

Marxist/Leninist Stages of Development

One interesting theory to explain Imperialism was borne out of the works of Karl Marx. Basically,
he believed that human societies were travelling through economic stages of development before
reaching the Communist Utopia where all are treated equally and all goods are distributed equitably.
Feudalism was a pre-condition for Capitalism which in turn was a pre-condition for Communism. It
was argued that Capitalism had the seeds of destruction within itself - capitalists would compete with
one another as they strived to make more and more profit - but they would be reduced in number but
becoming more efficient simultaneously. Eventually, it would be so efficient that it would produce
all the worldly goods that consumers would desire, but there would be so few capitalists left that the
wage slave workers would rise up and seize the factories and the means of production. It was Lenin
who had to adapt this theory to why a revolution might take place in relatively non-capitalist Tsarist
Russia which was barely moving out of the Feudal phase. He basically added another layer of
inevitability to explain that capitalist Europe was competing for the raw materials and markets that
colonies could provide. It was this, he explained, that would result in the outbreak of World War
One, as European nations desperately competed with one another for colonies and once these ran
out, would fight one another for domination - bringing the day forward for the 'real' Communist
Revolution. He therefore advocated staying neutral in the Capitalist war but was not averse to taking
the opportunity to seize power in October, 1917 as Russia was worn out by the long drawn out
attritional, total war. Communism was an easy ideology to sell to poor, exploited and oppressed
peoples around the world, Communist organizations and groups therefore became major resisters
and opponents to Imperial regimes the world over - especially when they became tied to Cold War
politics. Unfortunately, when agricultural or primary resource colonies gained their freedoms with
the promises of a Communist Utopia to fulfil it did not take long for disappointment, cronyism and
corruption to undermine and discredit Communism as a viable form of government. It may have
given some people inspiration to remove their imperial overlords, it just could not deliver on its
promises.

Informal Empire

Another interesting theory was one proposed by two economic historians, Gallagher and Robinson,
who basically stated that the British Empire actually tried not to take colonies if at all possible. In
fact, colonies were almost a sign of failure. They argued that the British were interested in trade
opportunities and if they could gain access to markets and raw materials without the need for
colonizing then so much the better. They gave examples of British 'soft' power existing in the
Americas, China and the Mediterranean area. These were areas where the British could do business
but without the overheads and costs of administering and defending territory. The argument
explained the late nineteenth century surge in acquisitions in being a consequence of having to
respond to the aggressive competition with other European powers who were keen to take the lands,
markets and resources for themselves and deny them to rivals as the world seemed to turn to
protectionism. Even Britain itself was tempted by the Imperial preferences proposed by Chamberlain
at the beginning of the 20th century. This theory would radically redraw the imperial map giving
precedence to those areas where no formal British control was required at all.
Metropolitan Domination

One theory for Britain's domination of the large slices of the world was described as Britain being
able to have taken in the resources of the various colonies in form of goods, capital, science and
populations and then reallocated them more efficiently using the institutions and condensed political
power available in the mother country and especially those in London. This theory is based on the
idea of the strong central government, educational, commercial and financial institutions which
mutually reinforced one another and used the resources of the empire to further enrich themselves
and build up an ever stronger competitive advantage - economically, strategically and politically. It
believed that the institutions used their wealth and power to guard their positions of power and to
further their own interests using the Empire as a conduit or arena in which to exercise their talents
and power. In this model, the periphery colonies were at the tender mercies of the dominant
metropole and had little local control over their destinies but had merely to respond to orders and
directions from the centre.

Complex Patchwork of Interacting and Dynamic Agencies

Coming somewhat full circle in the debate is the idea that the Empire was a far more complex, ad
hoc collection of competing, dynamic collection of agencies, individuals and companies which had
no set agenda but found the Empire a convenient arena in which to forward their own interests.
Unlike the Metropole example above, this theory believed that the actors could literally come from
all over the globe, including native peoples or their rulers and had no fixed example of what the
Empire should be like. This theory sees the variety of colonial governments, forms and institutions
as evidence of a far more haphazard but flexible approach to the concept of what constituted empire.
Some actors were happy to remain on the fringes of a free trade empire, others lobbied for inclusion
in a far more centralized form of administration. Some wished to benefit from the protection that the
Empire could provide, others used the colonial experience only so long as it was useful to their ends
and then jettisoned it when it had outlived its purpose. This theory believes that the empire was a
complex intermingling of motives, attitudes and purposes. It also believes that the localization of
these concerns means that a much more nuanced appraisal of Empire is possible as successes and
failures can be itemized and broken up regionally and by era. Empire was useful to some groups or
colonies at some points in time but exploitative or damaging at others. Using this theory, it is less a
zero-sum game of saying that Empire was a 'good' or 'bad' thing as in some other theories.
Combination of Factors

Of course, there is rarely a single answer to the complicated realities of politics, economics and
military rivalry. There is probably no single reason to explain how Britain created such a vast
institution. Various isolated reasons, advantages and localized situations would combine to create a
series of justifications for seizing isolated colonies that combined to form the huge and expansive
British Empire. Historians have debated the motivations and justifications for these processes for
pretty much as long as there has been an empire itself!