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- The Exodus (1629-41) About 21,000 Puritans, migrating from East Anglia to New England. These religious fundamentalists believed in ‘ordered liberty’: everybody had the right to live by their own rules, and the duty to live according to God’s law.
- Cavaliers and their Servants (1642-75) Some 45,000 Cavaliers drawn from English nobility and their indentured servants, migrating from the South of England to Virginia and the Lowland South.
- The Friends’ Migration (1675-1725) Around 23,000 Quakers, migrating from Northern England to the Delaware Valley in Pennsylvania, and later to the Midwest.
- The Flight from Northern Britain (1717-75) Some 250,000 ‘Borderers’, migrating from the Anglo-Scottish borderlands and Ulster to the Backcountry of Appalachia.
- Overview
- Origins of the British Empire
- Competition with France
British Empire was a worldwide system of dependencies that was brought under the sovereignty of the crown of Great Britain and the administration of the British government over some three centuries.
When did the British Empire begin?
The first tentative steps toward the establishment of the British Empire began with overseas settlements in the 16th century. Great Britain's maritime expansion accelerated in the 17th century and resulted in the establishment of settlements in North America and the West Indies. The East India Company began establishing trading posts in India in 1600, and the first permanent British settlement in Africa was made at James Island in the Gambia River in 1661.
Which sub-Saharan African country was the first to gain independence from the British Empire?
In 1957 the Gold Coast became the first sub-Saharan African colony of the British Empire to reach independence (as Ghana).
What was the last significant colony 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 with France, accelerated in the 17th century and resulted in the establishment of settlements in North America and the West Indies. By 1670 there were British American colonies in New England, Virginia, and Maryland and settlements in the Bermudas, Honduras, Antigua, Barbados, and Nova Scotia. Jamaica was obtained by conquest in 1655, and the Hudson’s Bay Company established itself in what became northwestern Canada from the 1670s on. The East India Company began establishing trading posts in India in 1600, and the Straits Settlements (Penang, Singapore, Malacca, and Labuan) became British through an extension of that company’s activities. The first permanent British settlement on the African continent was made at James Island in the Gambia River in 1661. Slave trading had begun earlier in Sierra Leone, but that region did not become a British possession until 1787. Britain acquired the Cape of Good Hope (now in South Africa) in 1806, and the South African interior was opened up by Boer 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 on piecemeal 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 the mercantilist philosophy of the time, the colonies were regarded as a source of necessary raw materials for England and were granted monopolies for their products, such as tobacco and sugar, 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. The Navigation Act of 1651 and subsequent 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 economist Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776), the loss of the American colonies, and the growth of a free-trade movement in Britain slowly brought it to an end in the first half of the 19th century.
The slave trade acquired a peculiar 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 future United States. Movements for the end 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 dominions in 1833.
British military and naval power, under the leadership of such men as Robert Clive, James Wolfe, and Eyre Coote, gained for Britain two of the most important parts of its empire—Canada and India. Fighting between the British and French colonies in North America was endemic in the first half of the 18th century, but the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ended the Seven Years’ War (known as the French and Indian War in North America), left Britain dominant in Canada. In India, the East India Company was confronted by the French Compagnie des Indes, but Robert Clive’s military victories against the French and the rulers of Bengal in the 1750s provided the British with a massive accession of territory and ensured their future supremacy in India.
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The loss of Britain’s 13 American colonies in 1776–83 was compensated by new settlements in Australia from 1788 and by the spectacular growth of Upper Canada (now Ontario) after the emigration of loyalists from what had become the United States. The Napoleonic Wars provided further additions to the empire; the Treaty of Amiens (1802) made Trinidad and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) officially British, and in the Treaty of Paris (1814) France ceded Tobago, Mauritius, Saint Lucia, and Malta. Malacca joined the empire in 1795, and Sir Stamford Raffles acquired Singapore in 1819. Canadian settlements in Alberta, Manitoba, and British Columbia extended British influence to the Pacific, while further British conquests in India brought in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh and the Central Provinces, East Bengal, and Assam.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Feb 1, 2024 · In this gallery of five maps, we examine the creation and expansion of the United States from the colonization of North America by European powers to the routes of the explorers who pushed ever westwards to the Pacific coast.
- Graphic Designer
Colonies were established in North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Though most British colonies in the Americas eventually gained independence, some colonies have remained under Britain's jurisdiction as British Overseas Territories .
Sep 22, 2024 · Jamestown Colony was the first permanent English settlement in North America, located near present-day Williamsburg, Virginia. Financed and organized by the Virginia Company, the colony was originally a private venture that had been granted a royal charter by King James I.
British America, known as English America before 1707, comprised the colonial territories of the English Empire, and the successor British Empire, in the Americas from 1607 to 1783. [1]
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This educational resource provides a comprehensive exploration of the historical, social, economic, and ideological factors that shaped the British Atlantic colonies and laid the foundation for the emergence of the United States of America.
