Everyone who is even a little interested in politics has repeatedly noticed that the population and government of the United Kingdom consider themselves representatives of a leading country in the western hemisphere. This belief was not developed from scratch. Over the course of several centuries, Great Britain really controlled vast territories scattered all over the globe.
British colonial empire
The map of a small island state began to increase at the very beginning of the 17th century. It was then, in 1607, that the British founded the first settlement in North America. At the same time, with the emergence of the East India Company (a commercial enterprise established by decree of Elizabeth I), the colonization of India began.
After the bourgeois revolution (1645), which marked the transition of the state from an absolutely monarchical to a bourgeois system, England, through armed confrontation with rival Spain and France, took control of the main part of the North American continent.
The Royal African Company, whose main source of income was the slave trade, as well as gold mining on the west coast of Africa, was established in 1660 and lasted until 1752. It is the slave trade (about 3.5 million people transported) that is considered the economic basis of the First British Empire.
Maps changed throughout the entire period of its existence. In subsequent years, as a result of an expansive (predatory) policy, all of India, Ceylon, Australian and New Zealand territories came under the control of the country.
England received the status of the largest colonial empire, "over which the sun never sets" by the middle of the 19th century.
The British Empire at the peak of power
A map of all the possessions of the United Kingdom of that period is conditionally divided into two parts:
- colonies consisting of immigrants;
- conquered territories.
The inhabitants of the resettlement colonies were mainly English migrants. Under favorable conditions for the population, a regime of administrative and, later, political autonomy was soon established.
Thirteen metropolises (territories controlled by the state-owner) were cut off from the map of the British Empire as a result of the American War of Independence (1775-1783), caused by exorbitant taxation by the authorities. The adoption of the British North America Act has changed the administrative status of Canada. According to the results of the Constitution of 1867, it became the dominion of Great Britain (an independent state within the empire, recognizing the supremacy of the monarch, and governed by the local governor general).
Conquered Land Management
The caste structure of society, tribal differences, territorial and linguistic disunity, fragmentation (more than 600 feudal possessions) contributed to the formation of the second type of colonies on the lands of India. Following the troops, merchants and industrialists moved to the occupied lands. The territories were subjected to systematic robbery, English orders and language were imposed, national identity was limited.
The motto of politics was the slogan “Divide and conquer”, according to which the best system for managing the occupied territories is inciting hatred between groups of the population and using it in the interests of the conquerors. Numerous rebellions, the most famous of which was the Sepoy Uprising of 1857, were suppressed with unprecedented cruelty.
Constant military conflicts have forced the government to revise the administrative system of India. The East India Company was disbanded, the behavior of the representatives of which caused massive claims from the local population. The head of the administration was the Governor-General or Viceroy, who was subordinate to the Ministry of Indian Affairs, which was intentionally created to change the situation; The Queen of England was proclaimed Empress of India. Administrative reforms had only a formal outcome and did not bring significant improvements to the life of the local population.
Ireland, conquered back in the 12th century and destroyed during the second military expansion, lacking a well-functioning economy, became part of the United Kingdom in 1800. The English aristocrats who own estates here shamelessly oppressed the place. The Irish, who did not join the flood of mass immigration and remained in their native land, lived in extremely miserable conditions. The local liberation movement forced the government to make a change and in 1869-1870 it issued a series of decrees, several equalizing the Irish in rights with the British. Unfortunately, the innovations touched only the wealthy layer of society.
Capture of Dutch possessions
By the end of the century, industrial Germany and the United States ousted Britain from a leading position in the global economy, its leadership was lost. The increase in the number of colonies seemed the only way out for the English bourgeoisie. A number of Arab and African territories, as well as the rest of India (Burma) came under the control of the United Kingdom as a result of a series of brutal wars with the Netherlands. Map of the British Empire of the 19th century, a continental state with a territory of just over 200 thousand square meters. km and a population not reaching the mark of 40 million people, was an empire with an area of more than 30 million square meters. km and a population of half a million people.
Collapse of the empire
A small state, possessing exorbitant imperial ambitions, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries could no longer cope with the management of vast territories and was forced to make several concessions. Australia became a union of five administratively autonomous states and was cut off from the map of the British Empire following the Constitution of 1867, which united the Australian colonies of the United Kingdom. The Union of South Africa became the dominance of Great Britain in 1910.
Due to the massive immigration from the British Isles of the English-speaking population to the dominant countries, a significant stratum of literate people has been created there. Independence and the role of controlled states in world political and economic processes increased. These trends contributed to the gradual decrease in the size of the map of the British Empire. In the first half of the XX century, the British dominions united and received the name "Commonwealth of Nations", which is used today.