Heirs of Empire: Part 1

All those who live in the United Kingdom today are, to one degree or another, heirs of the British empire.  Whether you are native born with a family history going back 1000 years or more, or a first generation immigrant, if you are living in the UK now you are enjoying the benefits of the empire. Indeed, if you live in the any of the countries over which the empire ruled you are also an heir of the empire.  You may think the legacy mixed but you are an inheritor and in many ways a beneficiary still. The British empire shaped the modern world: its legacy of nation states, democratisation, industrialisation, education, christianisation and common language are pervasive across its former territories.  Nations over which it never ruled were profoundly influenced by it. Even ‘enemy’ states such as the Communist governments which dominated Russia during the twentieth century and continue to dominate China today, are based on a political theory that was moulded in Britain and Europe.  It is hard to think of another nation that has shaped the world so profoundly as that of these small offshore islands on the western coast of Europe.

The British empire lasted approximately four centuries, from the early 1600s to a symbolic ending with the handing back of Hong Kong to China in 1999.  Born from defensive needs, rivalry with other European powers, the desire for trade,  and eventually rocket-fuelled by industrialisation, at its height in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it ruled over 24% of the world’s landmass and 23% of the world’s population - the largest empire the world has ever seen.  A further 6% of the world’s land came under the influence of British culture, as the former English colonies that formed the United States of America, fanned out across the continent in the century after their successful rebellion. 

The empire did not spring fully formed out of nothing.  European exploration and expansionism had started with the Portugese in the early 1400s and expanded rapidly after the completion of the Spanish re-conquest of the Iberian peninsula and Columbus’ discovery of America in 1492.  The discovery of the ‘New World’ and rivalry for shares in the lucrative spice trade from the East triggered acute national rivalries, huge influxes of wealth into western Europe and the rapid development of ocean-going maritime power.  After the Portugese and the Spanish the Dutch, the English and the French – the maritime nations of northern Europe – were the countries to enter the race; partly to enrich themselves and partly to counter the expansionist threat of Spain upon their homelands.  By the time of the mid-1500s, England was in a state of cold war with Spain, with naval captains such as Sir Francis Drake privately licensed by the English Crown to raid Spanish ships and ports.  In return Spain, fuelled by both dynastic and religious ambition, launched its invasion in 1588.  Famously the Spanish Armada came to disaster at the hands of foul weather and the English fleet.  English, Spanish, Dutch, Portugese and French rivalry drove forward the exploitation of the Americas, the demand for African slaves and the exploration of the world.  Drake had conducted the second global circumnavigation of the world in 1577 – 1580 and, after a false start with a failed settlement in 1585 – 87, the English established their first American settlement at Jamestown, in what is now the US State of Virginia, in May 1607. Seven years earlier Queen Elizabeth I had granted a Royal Charter to the East India Company to trade with India, South East Asia and China.  As the seventeenth century started the English – later the British – empire was well and truly founded and looking both east and west for opportunities.

The first two centuries or more were ones of near constant warfare with other European nations, until the defeat of Napoleonic French forces at Waterloo in 1815 confirmed peace in Europe and the undisputed mastery of the seas for the British, ushering in the century known as the Pax Britannica.  Below is a short list of the major conflicts which the British waged:

1627 – 1629: Anglo-French war

1652 – 1674: Anglo-Dutch Wars

1654 – 1660: Anglo-Spanish war

1688 – 1697: Nine Years War

1701 – 1713: War of the Spanish Succession

1727 – 1729: British – Spanish war

1756 – 1763: Seven Years war.  

1775 – 1783: American war of Independence  

1792 -1815: French revolutionary / Napoleonic wars

 These wars, fought for various dynastic, religious, political and mercantile reasons inevitably spilled over into the colonies that the European powers were establishing in North and South America, India, the Far East and to a lesser degree in Africa. By the time they were finished Britain had won and lost the lands of the USA, was well-established in India and the Far East and had both wrested control of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade from the Spanish, Portugese and Dutch and then abolished it.

As well as these numerous wars the country had gone through much interior strife and change, including civil war and the establishment of a republican commonwealth, which was in its turn overthrown.  This is a short list of the major events:

1642 – 1651: English Civil War

1649 – 1653: Cromwellian subjugation of Ireland

1688: Glorious Revolution in England.  The deposing of James II and accession of the Dutch Prince William of Orange, effectively ended the Anglo-Dutch maritime rivalry,

1689 – 1692: First Jacobite Rebellion

1715 – 1718:Second Jacobite Rebellion

1745 – 1746: Third Jacobite rebellion

Having entered the period with a strong monarchical government headed by a king with pretensions to absolutism, after two centuries the government had changed to one where other powers in the land; aristocrats, gentry, landowners, merchants and industrialists, represented through Parliament, were wielding increasing power in executive decision making.  For the common people the movement from a land-based agrarian economy to a city-based industrial one was in full swing.  People were moving en masse to the cities seeking work or emigrating to the new lands and opportunities overseas. Over them an aristocratic society lived in great wealth and enforced a highly punitive penal code. The shape of the world had also changed for the British, from being focused on and dominated by European affairs, the lands of the Americas had drawn their eyes westward, the need for slaves their eyes southward to Africa and the desire for trade to India and the lands of the east.  Finally, in 1770, the voyages of James Cook had led them to the vast, unexplored and sparsely populated continent of Australia.  The world it seemed was laid at their feet, brought to them by naval dominance and ever improving maritime technology.  The sea, as ever, had proven to be the highway of the world.

to be continued…