1. British Empire and decolonisation
A. Origins (1497–1583)
The
foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were
separate kingdoms. In 1496 King Henry VII of England, following the successes
of Spain and Portugal in
overseas exploration, commissioned John
Cabot to lead a voyage to discover a route to Asia via the North Atlantic. Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after the European discovery of America, and although
he successfully made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland (mistakenly believing, like Christopher Columbus, that he had reached Asia), there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot
led another voyage to the Americas the following year but nothing was heard of
his ships again.
No further
attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well
into the reign of Queen Elizabeth
I, during the last decades of the 16th century. In the meantime the Protestant
Reformation had turned England and Catholic Spain
into implacable enemies. In 1562,
the English
Crown encouraged the privateers John
Hawkins and Francis Drake to
engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the
coast of West Africa with the aim
of breaking into the Atlantic trade system. This effort was rebuffed and later,
as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified,
Elizabeth I gave her blessing to further privateering raids against Spanish
ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic,
laden with treasure from the New World. At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was
the first to use the term "British Empire") were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own
empire. By this time, Spain had become the dominant power in the Americas and
was exploring the Pacific ocean, Portugal had established trading posts and
forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had
begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River area, later to become New
France.
B. "First" British Empire (1583–1783) - in 1578,
Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery
and overseas exploration. That
year, Gilbert sailed for the West Indies with the
intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but
the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic. In 1583 he embarked on a second attempt, on this
occasion to the island of Newfoundland whose
harbour he formally claimed for England, although no settlers were left behind.
Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England, and was succeeded by his
half-brother, Walter
Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584. Later that year,
Raleigh founded the colony of Roanoke on the
coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of
supplies caused the colony to fail.
Captain John
Smith landing in Jamestown, Virginia, 1607
In 1603, James VI, King of Scots, ascended (as James I) to the
English throne and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty
of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace
with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations'
colonial infrastructures to the business of establishing its own overseas
colonies. The British
Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English
settlement of North
America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the
establishment of private
companies, most notably the English East India Company, to
administer colonies and overseas trade. This period, until the loss of
the Thirteen
Colonies after the American
War of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has
subsequently been referred to by some historians as the "First British
Empire".
Americas,
Africa and the slave trade - the Caribbean initially
provided England's most important and lucrative colonies, but not before several attempts at colonisation
failed. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604
lasted only two years, and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits. Colonies in St Lucia (1605)
and Grenada (1609)
also rapidly folded, but settlements were successfully established in St. Kitts (1624), Barbados (1627)
and Nevis (1628). The colonies soon adopted the system of sugar plantations successfully
used by the Portuguese in Brazil, which depended on slave labour, and—at
first—Dutch ships, to sell the slaves and buy
the sugar. To
ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of this trade remained in English
hands, Parliament decreed in 1651
that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies.
This led to hostilities with the United Dutch Provinces—a series
of Anglo-Dutch Wars—which would
eventually strengthen England's position in the Americas at the expense of the
Dutch. In 1655,
England annexed the island of Jamaica from the
Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonising the Bahamas.
Map of British colonies in North America, 1763–1776.
England's
first permanent settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown, led by
Captain John
Smith and managed by the Virginia Company Bermuda was
settled and claimed by England as a result of the 1609 shipwreck there of the
Virginia Company's flagship, and in 1615
was turned over to the newly formed Somers
Isles Company. The
Virginia Company's charter was revoked in 1624 and direct control of Virginia
was assumed by the crown, thereby
founding the Colony of Virginia. The London and Bristol Company was
created in 1610 with the aim of creating a permanent settlement on Newfoundland,
but was largely unsuccessful. In
1620, Plymouth was
founded as a haven for puritan religious
separatists, later known as the Pilgrims. Fleeing from religious
persecution would become the motive of many English would-be colonists to risk
the arduous trans-Atlantic
voyage: Maryland was
founded as a haven for Roman Catholics (1634), Rhode Island (1636)
as a colony tolerant of all religions and Connecticut (1639) for Congregationalists. The Province
of Carolina was founded in 1663. With the surrender of Fort Amsterdam in 1664,
England gained control of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, renaming it New York. This was formalised in
negotiations following the Second Anglo-Dutch War, in exchange
for Suriname. In 1681, the colony of Pennsylvania was
founded by William Penn. The American
colonies were less financially successful than those of the Caribbean, but had
large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far larger numbers of
English emigrants who preferred their temperate climates.
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/51/Tobacco_cultivation_%28Virginia%2C_ca._1670%29.jpg?1460568033206)
African slaves working in 17th-century Virginia, by an unknown artist, 1670.
In 1670, Charles
II incorporated by royal charter the Hudson's
Bay Company (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in the
area known as Rupert's Land, which would
later form a large proportion of the Dominion of Canada. Forts and trading posts
established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French,
who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent New
France.
Two years
later, the Royal African Company was
inaugurated, receiving from King Charles a monopoly of the trade to supply
slaves to the British colonies of the Caribbean. From the outset, slavery was the
basis of the British Empire in the West Indies. Until the abolition of the
slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for the transportation of 3.5
million African slaves to the Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic. To facilitate this trade, forts were established
on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the
British Caribbean, the
percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25 percent in 1650 to
around 80 percent in 1780, and in the 13 Colonies from 10 percent to 40 percent
over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies). For the slave traders, the trade was extremely
profitable, and became a major economic mainstay for such western British cities as Bristol and Liverpool, which formed
the third corner of the so-called triangular trade with Africa and the Americas. For the
transported, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor
diets meant that the average mortality rate during
the Middle
Passage was one in seven.
In 1695,
the Scottish
Parliament granted a charter to the Company
of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the isthmus of Panama. Besieged by
neighbouring Spanish colonists of New
Granada, and afflicted by malaria, the colony
was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a
financial disaster for Scotland—a quarter of Scottish capital was lost in the enterprise—and ended Scottish
hopes of establishing its own overseas empire. The episode also had major
political consequences, persuading the governments of both England and Scotland
of the merits of a union of countries, rather than just crowns. This occurred in 1707 with the Treaty of Union, establishing
the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Rivalry
with the Netherlands in Asia
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4f/Fort_St._George%2C_Chennai.jpg?1460567976584)
Fort
St. George was founded at Madras in 1639.
At the end of
the 16th century, England and the Netherlands began to challenge Portugal's
monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages—the
English, later British, East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, chartered in
1600 and 1602 respectively. The primary aim of these companies was to tap into
the lucrative spice trade, an effort
focused mainly on two regions; the East Indies archipelago, and an important hub in the trade
network, India. There, they competed for trade supremacy with Portugal and with
each other. Although
England ultimately eclipsed the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short
term the Netherlands' more advanced financial system and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left it with a stronger
position in Asia. Hostilities ceased after the Glorious
Revolution of 1688 when the Dutch William of Orange ascended
the English throne, bringing peace between the Netherlands and England. A deal
between the two nations left the spice trade of the East Indies archipelago to
the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles
soon overtook spices in terms of profitability, and by 1720, in terms of sales,
the British company had overtaken the Dutch.
Global conflicts with France
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/ff/The_Defeat_of_the_French_Fireships_attacking_the_British_Fleet_at_Anchor_before_Quebec.jpg?1460567943103)
Peace between
England and the Netherlands in 1688 meant that the two countries entered
the Nine Years' War as
allies, but the conflict—waged in Europe and overseas between France, Spain and
the Anglo-Dutch alliance—left the English a stronger colonial power than the
Dutch, who were forced to devote a larger proportion of their military budget on the
costly land war in Europe. The 18th
century saw England (after 1707, Britain) rise to be the world's dominant
colonial power, and France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage.
The death
of Charles II of Spain in 1700
and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philippe of Anjou, a grandson
of the King
of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their
respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for England and the other
powers of Europe. In 1701,
England, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against
Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted
until 1714.
At the
concluding Treaty of Utrecht, Philip
renounced his and his descendants' right to the French throne and Spain lost
its empire in Europe. The
British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain, Gibraltar and Minorca. Gibraltar
became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry
and exit point to the Mediterranean. Spain also
ceded the rights to the lucrative asiento (permission
to sell slaves in Spanish America) to Britain.
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/Clive.jpg/1024px-Clive.jpg?1460567822306)
Robert Clive's victory at the Battle of Plassey established the East India Company as a military as well as a commercial power.
During the
middle decades of the 18th century, there were several outbreaks of military
conflict on the Indian subcontinent, the Carnatic Wars, as the English East India Company (the
Company) and its French counterpart, the Compagnie
française des Indes orientales, struggled alongside local rulers to fill the vacuum
that had been left by the decline of the Mughal
Empire. The Battle
of Plassey in 1757, in which the British, led by Robert
Clive, defeated the Nawab of Bengal and his
French allies, left the Company in control of Bengal and as the major military and political power in
India. France
was left control of its enclaves but with
military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states,
ending French hopes of controlling India. In the following decades the Company gradually increased the size of
the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local rulers
under the threat of force from the British Indian Army, the vast majority of which was
composed of Indian sepoys.
The British
and French struggles in India became but one theatre of the global Seven Years' War (1756–1763)
involving France, Britain and the other major European powers. The signing of
the Treaty
of Paris (1763) had important consequences for the future of the
British Empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power there was
effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert's Land, and the ceding of New France to
Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under
British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. Along with its victory over
France in India, the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's
most powerful maritime power.
Loss of
the Thirteen American Colonies - during the
1760s and early 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and
Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the
British Parliament's attempts to govern and tax American colonists without
their consent. This was
summarised at the time by the slogan "No
taxation without representation", a perceived violation of the guaranteed Rights
of Englishmen. The American
Revolution began with rejection of Parliamentary authority and moves towards
self-government. In response Britain sent troops to reimpose direct rule,
leading to the outbreak of war in 1775.
The following year, in 1776, the United States declared independence. The entry
of France to the
war in 1778 tipped the military balance in the Americans' favour and after a
decisive defeat at Yorktown in 1781,
Britain began negotiating peace terms. American independence was acknowledged
at the Peace
of Paris in 1783.
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/Surrender_of_Lord_Cornwallis.jpg/1280px-Surrender_of_Lord_Cornwallis.jpg?1460567785194)
Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown. The loss of the
American colonies marked the end of the "first British Empire".
The loss of
such a large portion of British America, at the time
Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by some historians as the
event defining the transition between the "first" and
"second" empires, in which
Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and
later Africa. Adam Smith's Wealth
of Nations, published in 1776, had argued that colonies were
redundant, and that free trade should
replace the old mercantilist policies
that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to
the protectionism of Spain
and Portugal. The
growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after
1783 seemed to confirm Smith's view that political control was not necessary
for economic success.
Events in
America influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000 defeated Loyalists had
migrated from America following independence. The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint
John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, felt too far
removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a
separate colony in 1784. The Constitutional
Act of 1791 created the provinces of Upper
Canada (mainly English-speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse
tensions between the French and British communities, and implemented
governmental systems similar to those employed in Britain, with the intention
of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of
government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution.
C. Rise of the "Second" British Empire
(1783–1815)
Exploration
of the Pacific
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/76/Captainjamescookportrait.jpg/640px-Captainjamescookportrait.jpg?1460567738693)
James
Cook's mission was to find the alleged southern continent Terra
Australis.
Since
1718, transportation to the
American colonies had been a penalty for various criminal offences in Britain,
with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year across the
Atlantic. Forced to find
an alternative location after the loss of the 13 Colonies in 1783, the British
government turned to the newly discovered lands of Australia. The western coast of Australia had been
discovered for Europeans by the Dutch explorer Willem Jansz in 1606 and was later named New Holland by
the Dutch East India Company, but there was no attempt to colonise it. In
1770 James
Cook discovered the eastern coast of Australia while on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific Ocean, claimed the
continent for Britain, and named it New
South Wales. In
1778, Joseph
Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the
government on the suitability of Botany
Bay for the establishment of a penal
settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set
sail, arriving in 1788. Britain
continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840. The Australian colonies became profitable
exporters of wool and gold, mainly
because of gold rushes in the colony of Victoria, making its capital Melbourne the
richest city in the world and the
largest city after London in the British Empire.
During his
voyage, Cook also visited New Zealand, first discovered by Dutch explorer Abel
Tasman in 1642, and claimed the North and South islands
for the British crown in 1769
and 1770 respectively. Initially, interaction between the indigenous Māori population
and Europeans was limited to the trading of goods. European settlement
increased through the early decades of the 19th century, with numerous trading
stations established, especially in the North. In 1839, the New Zealand Company announced
plans to buy large tracts of land and establish colonies in New Zealand. On 6
February 1840, Captain William
Hobson and around 40 Maori chiefs signed the Treaty
of Waitangi. This
treaty is considered by many to be New Zealand's founding document, but differing interpretations of the Maori and
English versions of the text have meant that it continues to be a source of
dispute.
War
with Napoleonic France - Britain was
challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a
struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies
between the two nations. It was
not only Britain's position on the world stage that was threatened: Napoleon
threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many
countries of continental
Europe.
The Battle of Waterloo ended in the defeat of Napoleon.
The Napoleonic
Wars were therefore ones in which Britain invested large amounts of capital and
resources to win. French ports were blockaded by the Royal
Navy, which won a decisive victory over a Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in 1805.
Overseas colonies were attacked and occupied, including those of the
Netherlands, which was annexed by Napoleon in 1810. France was finally defeated
by a coalition of European armies in 1815. Britain was again the beneficiary of peace treaties: France ceded
the Ionian Islands, Malta (which it had
occupied in 1797 and 1798 respectively), Mauritius, St
Lucia, and Tobago; Spain ceded Trinidad; the
Netherlands Guyana, and the Cape
Colony. Britain returnedGuadeloupe, Martinique, French
Guiana, and Réunion to France, and Java and Suriname to the
Netherlands, while gaining control of Ceylon (1795–1815).
Abolition of slavery - with support from the British abolitionist movement, Parliament enacted
the Slave Trade Act in 1807,
which abolished the slave
trade in the empire. In 1808, Sierra
Leone was designated an official British colony for freed slaves. The Slavery Abolition Act passed
in 1833 abolished slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834 (with the
exception of St. Helena, Ceylon and the territories administered by the East
India Company, though these exclusions were later repealed). Under the Act,
slaves were granted full emancipation after a
period of 4 to 6 years of "apprenticeship".
Britain's
imperial century (1815–1914)
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/65/Imperial_Federation%2C_Map_of_the_World_Showing_the_Extent_of_the_British_Empire_in_1886_%28levelled%29.jpg/1024px-Imperial_Federation%2C_Map_of_the_World_Showing_the_Extent_of_the_British_Empire_in_1886_%28levelled%29.jpg?1460567644795)
An elaborate map of the British Empire in 1886, marked in the traditional
colour for imperial British dominions on maps.
Between 1815
and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial century" by
some historians, around
10,000,000 square miles (26,000,000 km2) of territory
and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire. Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any
serious international rival, other than Russia
in central Asia. Unchallenged
at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later
known as the Pax Britannica, and a foreign policy of "splendid
isolation". Alongside
the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant
position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of
many countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has
been characterised by some historians as "Informal
Empire".
British
imperial strength was underpinned by the steamship and
the telegraph, new
technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to
control and defend the empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together
by a network of telegraph cables, the so-called All Red Line.
East
India Company in Asia
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Victoria_Disraeli_cartoon.jpg?1460567585434)
An 1876 political cartoon of Benjamin
Disraeli (1804–1881) making Queen Victoria Empress of India. The caption reads "New crowns for old ones!"
The East
India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in
Asia. The Company's army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the
Seven Years' War, and the two continued to co-operate in arenas outside India:
the eviction of Napoleon from Egypt (1799),
the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition
of Singapore (1819)
and Malacca (1824)
and the defeat of Burma (1826).
From its base
in India, the Company had also been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export
trade to China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by
the Qing dynasty in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances
resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver
from Britain to China. In 1839,
the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium
led Britain to attack China in the First
Opium War, and resulted in the seizure by Britain of Hong
Kong Island, at that time a minor settlement.
During the
late 18th and early 19th centuries the British Crown began to assume an
increasingly large role in the affairs of the Company. A series of Acts of
Parliament were passed, including the Regulating Act of 1773, Pitt's
India Act of 1784 and the Charter Act of 1813 which
regulated the Company's affairs and established the sovereignty of the Crown
over the territories that it had acquired. The Company's eventual end was precipitated by the Indian Rebellion, a conflict
that had begun with the mutiny of sepoys, Indian
troops under British officers and discipline. The rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on
both sides. The following year the British government dissolved the Company and
assumed direct control over India through the Government of India Act 1858, establishing
the British Raj, where an appointed governor-general administered
India and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India. India
became the empire's most valuable possession, "the Jewel in the
Crown", and was the most important source of Britain's strength.
A series of
serious crop failures in the late 19th century led to widespread
famines on the subcontinent in which it is estimated that over 15 million
people died. The East India Company had failed to implement any coordinated
policy to deal with the famines during its period of rule. Later, under direct
British rule, commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the
causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an
effect.
Rivalry
with Russia
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3a/Relief_of_the_Light_Brigade.png/1280px-Relief_of_the_Light_Brigade.png?1460567443867)
British cavalry charging against Russian forces at Balaclava in 1854.
During the
19th century, Britain and the Russian
Empire vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the
declining Ottoman Empire, Qajar
dynasty and Qing Dynasty. This rivalry
in Eurasia came to be known as the "Great
Game". As far
as Britain was concerned, defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkeydemonstrated its imperial
ambitions and capabilities and stoked fears in Britain of an overland invasion
of India. In 1839,
Britain moved to pre-empt this by invading Afghanistan, but
the First Anglo-Afghan War was a
disaster for Britain.
When Russia
invaded the Turkish Balkans in 1853, fears of Russian dominance in the Mediterranean and
Middle East led Britain and France to invade the Crimean
Peninsula to destroy Russian naval capabilities. The ensuing Crimean
War (1854–56), which involved new techniques of modern
warfare, and was
the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial
power during the Pax Britannica, was a resounding defeat for
Russia. The
situation remained unresolved in Central Asia for two more decades, with
Britain annexing Baluchistan in 1876
and Russia annexing Kirghizia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. For a while
it appeared that another war would be inevitable, but the two countries reached
an agreement on their respective spheres of influence in the
region in 1878 and on all outstanding matters in 1907 with the signing of
the Anglo-Russian Entente. The destruction of the Russian
Navy by the Japanese at the Battle of Port Arthur during
the Russo-Japanese War of
1904–05 also limited its threat to the British.
Cape to
Cairo - the Dutch East
India Company had founded the Cape
Colony on the southern tip of Africa in 1652 as a way station for its ships
travelling to and from its colonies in the East Indies. Britain
formally acquired the colony, and its large Afrikaner (or Boer) population
in 1806, having occupied it in 1795 to prevent its falling into French hands,
following the invasion of the Netherlands by France. British immigration began to rise after 1820, and pushed thousands of
Boers, resentful of British rule, northwards to found their own—mostly
short-lived—independent republics, during the Great
Trek of the late 1830s and early 1840s. In the process the Voortrekkers clashed
repeatedly with the British, who had their own agenda with regard to colonial
expansion in South Africa and with several African polities, including those of
the Sotho and the Zulu nations.
Eventually the Boers established two republics which had a longer lifespan:
the South African Republic or
Transvaal Republic (1852–77; 1881–1902) and the Orange
Free State (1854–1902). In 1902
Britain occupied both republics, concluding a treaty with the two Boer
Republics following the Second
Boer War (1899–1902).
In 1869
the Suez Canal opened under Napoleon III, linking the
Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. Initially the Canal was opposed by the
British; but once opened, its strategic value was quickly recognised and
became the "jugular vein of the Empire". In 1875, the Conservative government
of Benjamin Disraeli bought
the indebted Egyptian ruler Isma'il
Pasha's 44 percent shareholding in the Suez Canal for £4 million
(£340 million in 2013). Although this did not grant outright control of
the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage. Joint Anglo-French
financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882. The French were still majority shareholders and
attempted to weaken the British position, but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople, which made the
Canal officially neutral territory.
With
French, Belgian and Portuguese activity
in the lower Congo River region undermining orderly incursion of tropical
Africa, the Berlin Conference of
1884–85 was held to regulate the competition between the European powers in
what was called the "Scramble for Africa" by
defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition
of territorial claims. The
scramble continued into the 1890s, and caused Britain to reconsider its
decision in 1885 to withdraw from Sudan. A joint force of British and
Egyptian troops defeated the Mahdist
Army in 1896, and rebuffed a French attempted invasion at Fashoda in 1898.
Sudan was nominally made an Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, but a
British colony in reality.
British gains
in southern and East Africa prompted Cecil
Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion in Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo" railway
linking the strategically important Suez
Canal to the mineral-rich South. During the
1880s and 1890s, Rhodes, with his privately owned British South Africa Company, occupied and annexed territories
subsequently named after him, Rhodesia.
Changing
status of the white colonies - the path to
independence for the white colonies of the British Empire began with the
1839 Durham Report, which
proposed unification and self-government for Upper and Lower
Canada, as a solution to political unrest there. This began with the passing of the Act of
Union in 1840, which created the Province
of Canada.Responsible government was
first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other
British North American colonies. With the passage of the British North America Act, 1867 by
the British Parliament, Upper and
Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formed into the Dominion
of Canada, a confederation enjoying full self-government with the exception of international relations. Australia and New Zealand achieved similar
levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901. The term "dominion status" was
officially introduced at the Colonial Conference of 1907.
The last
decades of the 19th century saw concerted political
campaigns for Irish home rule. Ireland had been united with Britain into the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the Act of
Union 1800 after the Irish
Rebellion of 1798, and had suffered a severe famine between 1845 and 1852. Home
rule was supported by the British Prime
minister, William Gladstone, who hoped
that Ireland might follow in Canada's footsteps as a Dominion within the
empire, but his 1886 Home
Rule bill was defeated in Parliament. Although the bill, if passed, would have
granted Ireland less autonomy within the UK than the Canadian provinces had
within their own federation, many MPs
feared that a partially independent Ireland might pose a security threat to
Great Britain or mark the beginning of the break-up of the empire. A second Home Rule bill was also
defeated for similar reasons. A third
bill was passed by Parliament in 1914, but not implemented because of the
outbreak of the First
World War leading to the 1916 Easter
Rising.
D. World wars (1914–1945) - by the turn of the 20th century, fears had begun to grow in Britain that it
would no longer be able to defend the metropole and the
entirety of the empire while at the same time maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation". Germany was rapidly rising as a military and
industrial power and was now seen as the most likely opponent in any future
war. Recognising that it was overstretched in the Pacific and threatened at home by the Imperial German Navy,
Britain formed an alliance with Japan
in 1902 and with its old enemies France and Russia in 1904 and 1907, respectively.
First
World War - Britain's fears of war with
Germany were realised in 1914 with the outbreak of the First
World War. Britain quickly invaded and occupied most of Germany's overseas colonies
in Africa. In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German
New Guinea and Samoa respectively.
Plans for a post-war division of the Ottoman
Empire, which had joined the war on Germany's side, were secretly drawn up by
Britain and France under the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement. This
agreement was not divulged to the Sharif of Mecca, who the
British had been encouraging to launch an Arab revolt against their Ottoman
rulers, giving the impression that Britain was supporting the creation of an
independent Arab state.
The British
declaration of war on Germany and its allies also committed the colonies and
Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support.
Over 2.5 million men served in the armies of the Dominions, as well as many
thousands of volunteers from the Crown
colonies. The
contributions of Australian and New Zealand troops during the 1915 Gallipoli
Campaign against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national
consciousness at home, and marked a watershed in the transition of Australia
and New Zealand from colonies to nations in their own right. The countries
continue to commemorate this occasion on Anzac
Day. Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridgein a similar
light. The
important contribution of the Dominions to the war
effort was recognised in 1917 by the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George when he
invited each of the Dominion Prime Ministers to join an Imperial War Cabinet to
co-ordinate imperial policy.
Under the
terms of the concluding Treaty of Versailles signed
in 1919, the empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of 1,800,000
square miles (4,700,000 km2) and 13 million new
subjects. The
colonies of Germany and the Ottoman
Empire were distributed to the Allied powers as League of Nations mandates. Britain
gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togo, and Tanganyika. The
Dominions themselves also acquired mandates of their own: the Union of South Africa gained South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia), Australia
gained German
New Guinea, and New Zealand Western Samoa. Nauru was made
a combined mandate of Britain and the two Pacific Dominions.
Inter-war
period
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b8/British_Empire_1921.png?1460567289171)
British Empire at its territorial peak in 1921.
The changing
world order that the war had brought about, in particular the growth of the
United States and Japan as naval powers, and the rise of independence movements
in India and Ireland, caused a major reassessment of British imperial policy. Forced to
choose between alignment with the United States or Japan, Britain opted not to
renew its Japanese alliance and instead signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, where Britain
accepted naval parity with the United States. This decision was the source of much debate in Britain during the
1930s as militaristic governments took hold in Japan
and Germany helped in part by the Great Depression, for it was
feared that the empire could not survive a simultaneous attack by both nations. Although the issue of the empire's security was
a serious concern in Britain, at the same time the empire was vital to the
British economy.
In 1919, the
frustrations caused by delays to Irish home rule led
members of Sinn
Féin, a pro-independence party that had won a majority of the Irish seats at
Westminster in the 1918
British general election, to establish an Irish assembly in
Dublin, at which Irish independence was declared. The Irish Republican Army simultaneously began a guerrilla
war against the British administration. The Anglo-Irish War ended in
1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish
Treaty, creating the Irish
Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal
independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown. Northern
Ireland, consisting of six of the 32 Irish counties which
had been established as a devolved region under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, immediately
exercised its option under the treaty to retain its existing status within the
United Kingdom.
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8a/ImperialConference.jpg?1460567234551)
George
V with the British and Dominion prime ministers at
the 1926 Imperial Conference.
A similar
struggle began in India when the Government of India Act 1919 failed
to satisfy demand for independence. Concerns over
communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar
Conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by
the Rowlatt Acts. This led to tension, particularly in the Punjab
region, where repressive measures culminated in the Amritsar Massacre. In Britain
public opinion was divided over the morality of the event, between those who
saw it as having saved India from anarchy, and those who viewed it with
revulsion. The
subsequent Non-Co-Operation movement was
called off in March 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident, and
discontent continued to simmer for the next 25 years.
In 1922,
Egypt, which had been declared a British protectorate at the
outbreak of the First World War, was granted formal
independence, though it continued to be a British client state until 1954. British
troops remained stationed in Egypt until the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936, under which it was agreed that the troops would
withdraw but continue to occupy and defend the Suez
Canal zone. In return, Egypt was assisted to join the League
of Nations. Iraq, a British mandate since 1920, also gained
membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from
Britain in 1932. In Palestine, Britain was
presented with the problem of mediating between the Arab and Jewish
communities. The 1917 Balfour Declaration, which had
been incorporated into the terms of the mandate, stated that a national home
for the Jewish people would be established in Palestine, and Jewish immigration
allowed up to a limit that would be determined by the mandatory power. This led to increasing conflict with the Arab
population, who openly revolted in 1936. As the
threat of war with Germany increased during the 1930s, Britain judged the
support of the Arab population in the Middle East as more important than the
establishment of a Jewish homeland, and shifted to a pro-Arab stance, limiting
Jewish immigration and in turn triggering a Jewish insurgency.
The ability of
the Dominions to set their own foreign policy, independent of Britain, was
recognised at the 1923 Imperial Conference. Britain's request for military assistance from
the Dominions at the outbreak of the Chanak
Crisis the previous year had been turned down by Canada and South Africa,
and Canada had refused to be bound by the 1923 Treaty
of Lausanne. After
pressure from Ireland and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference issued
the Balfour Declaration, declaring
the Dominions to be "autonomous Communities within the British Empire,
equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another" within a
"British Commonwealth of Nations". This declaration was given legal substance under the
1931 Statute of Westminster. The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New
Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now
independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent. Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in
1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression. Ireland distanced itself further from Britain
with the introduction of a new constitution in 1937,
making it a republic in all but name.
Second
World War - Britain's declaration of war
against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown
colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions of
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa. All soon
declared war on Germany, but the Irish
Free State chose to remain legally
neutral throughout the war.
After
the German occupation of France in 1940,
Britain and the empire stood alone against Germany, until the entry of
the Soviet Union to the war in 1941. British Prime Minister Winston
Churchil successfully
lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military
aid from the United States, but Roosevelt was not yet
ready to ask Congress to commit the country to
war. In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met and signed the Atlantic
Charter, which included the statement that "the rights of all peoples to
choose the form of government under
which they live" should be respected. This wording was ambiguous as to
whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany, or the peoples
colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by
the British, Americans, and nationalist movements.
In December
1941, Japan launched, in quick
succession, attacks on British Malaya, the United
States naval base at Pearl Harbor, and Hong Kong. Churchill's
reaction to the entry of the United States into the war was that Britain was
now assured of victory and the future of the empire was safe, but the
manner in which British forces were rapidly defeated in the Far East
irreversibly harmed Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power. Most damaging of all was the fall of Singapore, which had
previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of
Gibraltar. The
realisation that Britain could not defend its entire empire pushed Australia
and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer
ties with the United States. This resulted in the 1951 ANZUS Pact between
Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America.
E. Decolonisation and decline (1945–1997) - though Britain and the empire emerged victorious from
the Second World War, the effects
of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a
continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, was in ruins, and
host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, who now held the
balance of global power. Britain
was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the
negotiation of a $US 4.33 billion loan (US$56
billion in 2012) from the United States, the last instalment of which was repaid in 2006. At the same time, anti-colonial movements were
on the rise in the colonies of European nations. The situation was complicated
further by the increasing Cold
War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union. In principle, both
nations were opposed to European colonialism. In practice, however,
American anti-communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, and
therefore the United States supported the continued existence of the British
Empire to keep Communist expansion in check. The "wind of change"
ultimately meant that the British Empire's days were numbered, and on the
whole, Britain adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies
once stable, non-Communist governments were available to transfer power to.
This was in contrast to other European powers such as France and Portugal, which waged costly and ultimately unsuccessful
wars to keep their empires intact. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people
under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to five million,
three million of whom were in Hong Kong.
Initial disengagement
The
pro-decolonisation Labour government,
elected at the 1945 general election and led
by Clement Attlee, moved
quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the empire: that of Indian independence. India's two major political parties—the Indian National Congress and
the Muslim League—had been
campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed as to how it should be
implemented. Congress favoured a unified secular Indian state, whereas the
League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate Islamic
state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil
unrest and the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy during 1946 led Attlee to promise independence no later than 1948. When the
urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent, the newly
appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord
Mountbatten, hastily brought forward the date to 15 August 1947. The borders drawn by the British to
broadly partition India into
Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly
independent states of India and Pakistan. Millions of Muslims subsequently crossed from India
to Pakistan and Hindus vice versa, and violence between the two communities
cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part
of the British Raj, and Sri
Lanka gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan
and Sri Lanka became members
of the Commonwealth, while Burma
chose not to join.
The British Mandate of Palestine, where an
Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar
problem to that of India. The
matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish
refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following the Holocaust, while Arabs
were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. Frustrated by the intractability
of the problem, attacks by Jewish paramilitary organisations and the increasing
cost of maintaining its military presence, Britain announced in 1947 that it
would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve. The UN General Assembly subsequently voted for a plan to partition
Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.
Following the
defeat of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in
Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly
retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin. The fact that the guerrillas were primarily
Malayan-Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising
was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the
insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted. The Malayan
Emergency, as it was called, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957,
Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within
the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with
Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo joined
to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-majority Singapore was expelled
from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations. Brunei, which had
been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union and maintained its status until independence in
1984.
Suez
and its aftermath
![]() |
British Prime Minister Anthony Eden's decision to invade Egypt during the Suez Crisis ended his political career and revealed Britain's weakness as an imperial power. |
In July 1956,
Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of Anthony
Eden, who had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, was to collude with France
to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that
would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the
canal. Eden
infuriated US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, by his lack
of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion. Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility
of a wider war with the Soviet
Union after it threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower
applied financial leverage by
threatening to sell US reserves of the British
pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency. Though the invasion force was militarily
successful in its objectives, UN
intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of
its forces, and Eden resigned.
The Suez
Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and
confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage, demonstrating that henceforth
it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full
support, of the United States. The
events at Suez wounded British national
pride, leading one MP to describe it as
"Britain's Waterloo" and
another to suggest that the country had become an "American satellite". Margaret
Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen the British
political establishment as "Suez syndrome", from which Britain did
not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland
Islands from Argentina in 1982.
While the Suez
Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse. Britain again deployed its armed forces to the
region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on
these occasions with American approval, as the
new Prime Minister Harold
Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States. Britain maintained a military presence in the
Middle East for another decade. In January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound, Prime
Minister Harold
Wilson and his Defence Secretary Denis
Healey announced that British troops would be withdrawn from major military
bases East of
Suez, which included the ones in the Middle East, and primarily from Malaysia and
Singapore. The
British withdrew from Aden in 1967, Bahrain in 1971,
and Maldives in 1976.
Wind of
change
![]() |
British decolonisation in Africa. By the end of the 1960s,
all but Rhodesia (the future Zimbabwe) and the
South African mandate of South West Africa (Namibia)
had achieved recognised independence.
|
Macmillan gave
a speech in Cape
Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of "the wind of change blowing
through this continent". Macmillan
wished to avoid the same kind of colonial
war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under
his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly. To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the
1950s—Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya—were added nearly ten times that
number during the 1960s.
Britain's
remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governingSouthern
Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968. British withdrawal from the southern
and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process. Kenyan independence was
preceded by the eight-year Mau Mau
Uprising. In Rhodesia, the 1965 Unilateral
Declaration of Independence by the white minority resulted in a civil war that
lasted until the Lancaster
House Agreement of 1979, which set the terms for recognised
independence in 1980, as the new nation of Zimbabwe.
In the
Mediterranean, a guerrilla war waged by Greek Cypriots ended in
(1960) an independent Cyprus, with the UK retaining the military
bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo were amicably
granted independence from the UK in 1964, though the idea had been raised in
1955 of integration
with Britain.
Most of the
UK's Caribbean territories achieved independence after the
departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from
the West Indies Federation, established
in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one
government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two largest members. Barbados achieved
independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands in the
1970s and 1980s, but Anguilla and
the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to
revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to
independence. The British Virgin Islands, Cayman
Islands and Montserrat opted to
retain ties with Britain, while Guyana achieved
independence in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British
Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964
and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981.
A dispute with Guatemala over
claims to Belize was left unresolved.
British territories
in the Pacific acquired independence in the 1970s beginning with Fiji in 1970
and ending with Vanuatu in 1980. Vanuatu's independence was delayed
because of political conflict between English and French-speaking communities,
as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with
France. Fiji, Tuvalu, the Solomon
Islands and Papua New Guinea chose to
become Commonwealth realms.
End of
empire
![]() |
The Hong Kong Convention Centre hosted the ceremony for the
Transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997,
symbolically marking the "end of Empire".
|
In 1980, Rhodesia,
Britain's last African colony, became the independent nation of Zimbabwe. The
New Hebrides achieved independence (as Vanuatu) in 1980, with Belize following
suit in 1981. The passage of the British Nationality Act 1981, which
reclassified the remaining Crown colonies as "British Dependent
Territories" (renamed British Overseas Territories in
2002) meant that, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts (and the
acquisition in 1955 of an uninhabited rock in the Atlantic Ocean, Rockall), the process of decolonisation that had begun
after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve in
defending its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a
long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish
Empire. Britain's
ultimately successful military response to retake the islands during the
ensuing Falklands War was viewed by many to have contributed to
reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world power. The same year, the Canadian government severed
its last legal link with Britain by patriating the
Canadian constitution from Britain. The 1982
Canada Act passed by the British parliament ended
the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution. Similarly, the Constitution Act 1986 reformed
the constitution of New
Zealand to sever its constitutional link with Britain, and the Australia
Act 1986 severed the constitutional link between Britain and the Australian
states.
In September
1982, Prime minister Margaret
Thatcher travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese government on the
future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong. Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty
of Nanking, Hong Kong Island itself
had been ceded to Britain in perpetuity, but the vast majority of
the colony was constituted by the New
Territories, which had been acquired under a 99-year
lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997. Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially
wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty,
though this was rejected by China. A deal
was reached in 1984—under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong
would become a special
administrative region of the People's Republic of China, maintaining
its way of life for at least 50 years. The handover ceremony in 1997
marked for many, including Charles, Prince of Wales, who was in attendance, "the end of
Empire".
Legacy
The fourteen British Overseas Territories.
Britain
retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles, which were
renamed the British
Overseas Territories in 2002. Some are
uninhabited except for transient military or scientific personnel; the
remainder are self-governing to varying degrees and are reliant on the UK
for foreign relations and defence. The British
government has stated its willingness to assist any Overseas Territory that
wishes to proceed to independence, where that is an option. British sovereignty of several of the overseas
territories is disputed by their geographical neighbours: Gibraltar is
claimed by Spain, the Falkland
Islands and South
Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are claimed by Argentina, and
the British Indian Ocean Territory is
claimed by Mauritius and Seychelles. The British Antarctic Territory is subject to overlapping claims by Argentina and Chile, while many
countries do not recognise any territorial claims in Antarctica.
Most former
British colonies and protectorates are among the 53 member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, a
non-political, voluntary association of equal
members, comprising a population of around 2.2 billion people. Sixteen Commonwealth
realms voluntarily continue to share the British monarch,
Queen Elizabeth II, as their head of state. These sixteen nations are distinct
and equal legal entities – the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas,Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the
Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
Decades, and
in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on
the independent nations that arose from the British Empire. The empire
established the use of English in regions around the world. Today it is the
primary language of up to 400 million people and is spoken by about one and a half
billion as a first, second or foreign language.
The spread of
English from the latter half of the 20th century has been helped in part by the
cultural and economic influence of the United States, itself originally formed
from British colonies. Except in Africa where nearly all the former colonies
have adopted the presidential system, the
English parliamentary system has
served as the template for the governments for many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems.
The
British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council still
serves as the highest court of appeal for several former colonies in the
Caribbean and Pacific. British Protestant missionaries who
travelled around the globe often in advance of soldiers and civil servants spread
the Anglican Communion to all
continents. British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway
stations and government buildings, can be seen in many cities that were once
part of the British Empire.
2. Emigration and immigration: ethnic diversity and ethnic relations
Since
1945, immigration to the United Kingdom under British
nationality law has been substantial, in particular from
the Republic of Ireland and from
the former colonies and
territories of the British Empire such
as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Caribbean, South
Africa, Kenya and Hong Kong. Other
immigrants have come as asylum seekers, seeking protection as refugees under
the United
Nations 1951 Refugee Convention, or from member states of the European Union, exercising
one of the European Union's Four
Freedoms.
About 70% of
the population increase between the 2001 and 2011 censuses was due to foreign-born immigration. 7.5 million people (11.9 percent of
the population at the time) were born abroad, although the census gives no
indication of their immigration status or intended length of stay.
Provisional
figures show that in 2013, 526,000 people arrived to live in the UK whilst
314,000 left, meaning that net inward migration was 212,000. The number of
people immigrating to the UK increased between 2012 and 2013 by 28,000, whereas
the number emigrating fell by 7,000.
From April
2013 to April 2014, a total of 560,000 immigrants were estimated to have
arrived in the UK, including 81,000 British citizens and 214,000 from other
parts of the EU. An estimated 317,000 people left, including 131,000 British
citizens and 83,000 other EU citizens. The top countries represented in terms
of arrivals were: China, India, Poland, the United States, and Australia.
In 2014,
approximately 125,800 foreign citizens were naturalised as British citizens.
This figure fell from around 208,000 in 2013, which was the highest since 1962,
when records began. Between 2009 and 2013, the average number of people granted
British citizenship per year was 195,800. The main countries of previous
nationality of those naturalised in 2014 were India, Pakistan, the Philippines,
Nigeria, Bangladesh, Nepal, China, South Africa, Poland and Somalia. The British government can also grant settlement
to foreign nationals, which confers on them permanent
residence in the UK, without granting them British citizenship. Grants of
settlement are made on the basis of various factors, including employment,
family formation and reunification, and asylum (including to deal with backlogs
of asylum cases). The
total number of grants of settlement was approximately 154,700 in 2013,
compared to 241,200 in 2010 and 129,800 in 2012.
In comparison,
migration to and from Central and Eastern Europe has increased since 2004 with the accession to
the European
Union of eight Central and Eastern European
states, since there is free
movement of labour within the EU. In 2008, the UK government began phasing in a new points-based immigration system for
people from outside of the European
Economic Area.
A. British Empire and the Commonwealth - from the mid-eighteenth century until at least 1956,
and longer in many areas, the British
Empire covered a large proportion of the globe. Both during this time, and
following the granting of independence to most colonies after Second
World War, the vast majority of immigrants to the UK were from either current or
former colonies, most notably those in the Indian subcontinent, South East Asia, Oceania and the Caribbean.
Following the
end of the Second World War, the British
Nationality Act 1948 allowed the 800 million subjects in the British Empire to
live and work in the United Kingdom without needing a visa, although this was
not an anticipated consequece of the Act, which "was never intended to
facilitate mass migration". This
migration was initially encouraged to help fill gaps in the UK labour
market for both skilled and unskilled jobs, including in public services
such as the National
Health Service and London
Transport, and many people were specifically brought to the UK on ships such as
the Empire
Windrush.
Commonwealth immigration,
made up largely of economic migrants, rose from
3,000 per year in 1953 to 46,800 in 1956 and 136,400 in 1961. The heavy numbers of migrants resulted in the
establishment of a Cabinet committee in June 1950 to find "ways which
might be adopted to check the immigration into this country of coloured people
from British colonial territories".
Although the
Committee recommended not to introduce restrictions, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act was
passed in 1962 as a response to public sentiment that the new arrivals
"should return to their own countries" and that "no more of them
come to this country". Introducing
the legislation to the House of Commons, the Conservative Home Secretary Rab Butler stated
that:
The
justification for the control which is included in this Bill, which I shall
describe in more detail in a few moments, is that a sizeable part of the entire
population of the earth is at present legally entitled to come and stay in this
already densely populated country. It amounts altogether to one-quarter of the
population of the globe and at present there are no factors visible which might
lead us to expect a reversal or even a modification of the immigration trend.
The new Act
required migrants to have a job before they arrived, to possess special skills
or who would meet the "labour needs" of the national economy. In
1965, to combat the perceived injustice in the case where the wives of British
subjects could not obtain British nationality, the British Nationality Act was
adopted. Shortly afterwards, refugees from Kenya and Uganda, fearing
discrimination from their own national governments, began to arrive in Britain;
as they had retained their British nationality granted by the 1948 Act, they
were not subject to the later controls. The Conservative MP Enoch
Powell campaigned for tighter controls on immigration which resulted in the
passing of the Commonwealth
Immigrants Act in 1968.
For the first
time, the Act required migrants to have a "substantial connection with the
United Kingdom", namely to be connected by birth or ancestry to a UK
national. Those who did not could only obtain United Kingdom nationality at the
discretion of the national authorities. One
month after the adoption of the Act, Enoch Powell made his infamous Rivers of Blood speech.
By 1972, with
the passing of the Immigration Act, only holders
of work permits, or people with parents or grandparents born in the
UK could gain entry – effectively stemming primary immigration from
Commonwealth countries. The Act
abolished the distinction between Commonwealth and non-Commonwealth entrants.
The Conservative government nevertheless allowed, amid much controversy, the
immigration of 27,000 individuals displaced from Uganda after the coup d'état led
by Idi
Amin in 1971.
In the 1970s,
an average of 72,000 immigrants were settling in the UK every year from the
Commonwealth; this decreased in the 1980s and early 1990s to around 54,000 per
year, only to rise again to around 97,000 by 1999. The total number of
Commonwealth immigrants since 1962 is estimated at around 2.5 million.
The Ireland
Act 1949 has the unusual status of recognising the Republic of Ireland, but
affirming that its citizens are not
citizens of a foreign country for the purposes of any law in the United Kingdom. This act was initiated at a time when Ireland
withdrew from the Commonwealth of Nations after
declaring itself a republic.
World
War II - in the lead-up
to World War II, many people from Germany, particularly
those belonging to minorities which were persecuted under Nazi rule,
such as Jews, sought to
emigrate to the United Kingdom, and it is estimated that as many as 50,000 may
have been successful. There were immigration caps on the number who could enter
and, subsequently, some applicants were turned away. When the UK declared war on
Germany, however, migration between the countries ceased.
Post-war
immigration (1945–1983)
Following the
end of World War II, substantial groups of people from Soviet-controlled territories settled in Britain,
particularly Poles and Ukrainians. The UK
recruited displaced people as so-called European Volunteer Workers in order to
provide labour to industries that were required in order to aid economic
recovery after the war. In the
1951 census, the Polish-born population of the UK numbered some 162,339, up
from 44,642 in 1931.
Indians began
arriving in the UK in large numbers shortly after their country gained
independence in 1947, although there were a number of people from India living
the UK even in the earlier years. More than 60,000 arrived before 1955, many of
whom drove buses, or worked in foundries or textile factories.
Later arrivals opened corner
shops or ran post offices. The flow of Indian immigrants peaked between 1965
and 1972, boosted in particular by Idi
Amin's sudden decision to expel all 50,000 Gujarati Indians
from Uganda. Around
30,000 Ugandan Asians migrated to the UK.
There was also
an influx of refugees from Hungary, following
the crushing of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, numbering
20,990.
Until the
Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962, all Commonwealth citizens
could enter and stay in the UK without any restriction. The Act made Citizens
of the United Kingdom and Colonies (CUKCs), whose passports were not
directly issued by the UK Government (i.e., passports issued by the Governor of
a colony or by the Commander of a British protectorate), subject to
immigration control.
Enoch
Powell gave the famous "Rivers
of Blood" speech on 20 April 1968 in which he warned his audience of what he
believed would be the consequences of continued unchecked immigration from the
Commonwealth to Britain. Opposition Leader Edward
Heath sacked Powell from his Shadow Cabinet the day after the speech, and
he never held another senior political post. Powell received 110,000 letters –
only 2,300 disapproving as a
result of the speech and a Gallup poll at the end of April showed that 74% of
those asked agreed with his speech. After
the 'Rivers of Blood' speech, Powell was transformed into a national public
figure and won huge support across Britain. Three days after the speech, on 23 April, as the Race
Relations Bill was being debated in the House of Commons, around 2,000 dockers
walked off the job to march on Westminster protesting against Powell's
dismissal, and the
next day 400 meat porters from Smithfield market handed in a 92-page petition
in support of Powell.
By 1972, only
holders of work permits, or people with parents or grandparents born in the
UK could gain entry – significantly reducing primary immigration from
Commonwealth countries.
B. Contemporary immigration (1983 onwards) - the British Nationality Act 1981, which was
enacted in 1983, distinguishes between British citizen or British Overseas Territories citizen.
It also made a distinction between nationality by descent and
nationality other than by descent. Citizens by descent cannot
automatically pass on British nationality to a child born outside the United
Kingdom or its Overseas Territories (though in some situations the child can be
registered as a citizen).
Immigration
officers have to be satisfied about a person's nationality and identity and
entry can be refused if they are not satisfied.
During the
1980s and 1990s, the civil
war in Somalia lead to a large number of Somali immigrants, comprising
the majority of the current Somali population in the UK. In the late
1980s, most of these early migrants were granted asylum, while those arriving
later in the 1990s more often obtained temporary status. There has also been
some secondary migration of Somalis to the UK from the Netherlands and Scandinavia. The main
driving forces behind this secondary migration included a desire to reunite
with family and friends and for better employment opportunities.
Non-European
immigration rose significantly during the period from 1997, not least because
of the government's abolition of the primary purpose rule in June 1997. This change made it easier for UK residents to
bring foreign spouses into the country.
The former
government advisor Andrew Neather in the Evening
Standard stated that the deliberate policy of ministers
from late 2000 until early 2008 was to open up the UK to mass migration.
From The European
Union - One of
the Four Freedoms of
the European Union, of which the
United Kingdom is a member, is the right to the free movement of people as codified
in the Directive
2004/38/EC and the EEA Regulations (UK).
Since the
expansion of the EU on 1 May
2004, the UK has accepted immigrants from Central and Eastern
Europe, Malta and Cyprus, although the
substantial Maltese and Greek-Cypriots and Turkish-Cypriot communities
were established earlier through their Commonwealth connection. There are
restrictions on the benefits that members of eight of these accession countries
(A8 nationals) can claim, which are covered by the Worker Registration Scheme. Many other European Union member states
exercised their right to temporary immigration control (which ended in 2011) over
entrants from these accession states, but some
subsequently removed these restrictions ahead of the 2011 deadline.
Research
conducted by the Migration Policy Institute for
the Equality and Human Rights Commission suggests
that, between May 2004 and September 2009, 1.5 million workers migrated from
the new EU member states to the UK, but that many have returned home, with the
result that the number of nationals of the new member states in the UK
increased by some 700,000 over the same period. Migration from Poland in particular has become
temporary and circular in nature. In 2009,
for the first time since the enlargement, more nationals of the eight Central
and Eastern European states that joined the EU in 2004 left the UK than arrived. Research commissioned by the Regeneration and
Economic Development Analysis Expert Panel suggested migrant workers leaving
the UK due to the recession are likely to return in the future and cited
evidence of "strong links between initial temporary migration and intended
permanent migration".
The Government
announced that the same rules would not apply to nationals of Romania and Bulgaria (A2
nationals) when those countries acceded to the EU in 2007. Instead,
restrictions were put in place to limit migration to students, the
self-employed, highly skilled migrants and food and agricultural workers.
In February
2011, the Leader of the Labour Party, Ed
Miliband, stated that he thought that the Labour government's decision to permit
the unlimited immigration of eastern European migrants had been a mistake,
arguing that they had underestimated the potential number of migrants and that
the scale of migration had had a negative impact on wages.
A report by
the Department for
Communities and Local Government (DCLG) entitled International Migration
and Rural Economies, suggests that intra-EU migration since enlargement has
resulted in migrants settling in rural locations without a prior history of
immigration.
Research
published by University College London in July
2009 found that, on average, A8 migrants were younger and better educated than
the native population, and that if they had the same demographic
characteristics of natives, would be 13 per cent less likely to claim benefits
and 28 per cent less likely to live in social
housing.
Refugees
and asylum seekers
Asylum applications rose then fell during the 1990s and 2000s |
Nonetheless
the issue of immigration has been a controversial political issue since the
late 1990s. Both the Labour
Party and the Conservatives have
suggested policies perceived as being "tough on
asylum" (although the Conservatives have dropped a previous pledge to
limit the number of people who could claim asylum in the UK, which would likely
have breached the UN Refugee Convention) and the tabloid media
frequently print headlines about an "immigration crisis".
This is
denounced, by those seeking to ensure that the UK upholds its international
obligations, as disproportionate. Concern is also raised about the treatment of
those held in detention and the practice of dawn
raiding families, and holding young children in immigration detention centres
for long periods of time. The
policy of detaining asylum-seeking children was to be abandoned as part of
the coalition
agreement between the Conservatives and the Liberal
Democrats, who formed a government in May 2010. However, in July 2010 the government was accused of back-tracking on
this promise after the Immigration Minister Damian
Green announced that the plan was to minimise, rather than
end, child detention.
However,
critics of the UK's asylum policy often point out the "safe third country
rule" – the convention that
asylum seekers must apply in the first free nation they reach, not go "asylum
shopping" for the nation they prefer. EU courts have upheld this policy. Research conducted by the Refugee
Council suggests that most asylum seekers in the UK had their destination
chosen for them by external parties or agents, rather than choosing the UK
themselves.
In February
2003, Prime Minister Tony
Blair promised on television to reduce the number of asylum seekers by half
within 7 months, apparently catching unawares the members of his own
government with responsibility for immigration policy. David
Blunkett, then the Home Secretary, called the
promise an objective rather than a target.
It was met
according to official figures. There is also a Public Performance Target
to remove more asylum seekers who have been judged not to be refugees under the
international definition than new anticipated unfounded applications. This
target was met early in 2006. Official
figures for numbers of people claiming asylum in the UK were at a 13-year low
by March 2006.
Human
rights organisations such as Amnesty International have
argued that the government's new policies, particularly those concerning detention centres,
have detrimental effects on asylum applicants and their children, and
those facilities have seen a number of hunger
strikes and suicides. Others have argued that recent government policies
aimed at reducing 'bogus' asylum claims have had detrimental impacts on those genuinely
in need of protection.
In addition to
offering asylum, the UK operates a small refugee resettlement scheme in
co-operation with the UNHCR known as
the Gateway Protection Programme.
Citizenship laws - individuals wanting
to apply for British citizenship have to demonstrate their commitment by
learning English and by having an understanding of British history, culture and
traditions. Any
individual seeking to apply for naturalisation or indefinite leave to remain
must pass the official Life in the UK test.
Illegal
immigration - Illegal (sometimes termed irregular)
immigrants in the UK include those who have:
- entered the UK without authority
- entered with false documents overstayed their visas
Although it is difficult to know how many people reside in the UK illegally, a Home Office study released in March 2005 estimated a population of between 310,000 and 570,000. Migration Watch UK has criticised the Home Office figures for not including the UK-born dependent children of unauthorised migrants. They suggest the Home Office has underestimated the numbers of unauthorised migrants by between 15,000 and 85,000. In 2002 the Home office stated that the figures Migration Watch produces should be treated with 'considerable caution', because of the intrinsic difficulty of quantifying undocumented immigration. The UK Immigration Advisory Service has referred to these estimates as "idle speculation".
A recent study
into irregular immigration states that "most irregular migrants have
committed administrative offences rather than a serious crime".
Jack
Dromey, Deputy General of the Transport and General Workers Union and Labour
Party treasurer, suggested in May 2006 that there could be around 500,000
illegal workers. He called for a public debate on whether an amnesty should be
considered. David
Blunkett has suggested that this might be done once the identity card scheme is rolled out.
London
Citizens, a coalition of community organisations, is running a regularisation
campaign called Strangers into Citizens, backed by figures
including the former leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, the Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor. Analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research suggested
that an amnesty would net the government up to £1.038 billion per year in fiscal
revenue. However,
analysis by Migration Watch UK suggests
that if the migrants granted amnesty were given access to healthcare and other
benefits, the net cost to the exchequer would be £5.530 billion annually.
It has since
been suggested that to deport all of the irregular migrants from the UK would
take 20 years and cost up to £12 billion. Current Mayor
of London Boris
Johnson has commissioned a study into a possible amnesty for illegal
immigrants, citing larger tax gains within the London area which is considered
to be home to the majority of the country's population of such immigrants.
In February
2008, the government introduced new £10,000 fines for employers found to be
employing illegal immigrants where there is negligence on the part of the
employer, with unlimited fines or jail sentences for employers acting knowingly.
Managed migration
Shows immigration and emigration with net figures, including British and non-British citizens. Data from Office for National Statistics.
"Managed migration" is the term for all legal labour and student migration from outside of the European Union and this accounts for a substantial percentage of overall immigration figures for the UK. Many of the immigrants who arrive under these schemes bring skills which are in short supply in the UK. This area of immigration is managed by UK Visas and Immigration, a department within the Home Office. Applications are made at UK embassies or consulates or directly to UK Visas and Immigration, depending upon the type of visa or permit required.
In April 2006 changes to the managed migration system were proposed that would create one points-based immigration system for the UK in place of all other schemes. Tier 1 in the new system – which replaced the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme – gives points for age, education, earning, previous UK experience but not for work experience. The points-based system was phased in over the course of 2008, replacing previous managed migration schemes such as the work permit system and the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme.
A points-based system is composed of five tiers was first described by the UK Border Agency as follows:
Tier 1 – for highly skilled individuals, who can contribute to growth and productivity;
Tier 2 – for skilled workers with a job offer, to fill gaps in the United Kingdom workforce;
Tier 3 – for limited numbers of low-skilled workers needed to fill temporary labour shortages;
Tier 4 – for students;
Tier 5 – for temporary workers and young people covered by the Youth Mobility Scheme, who are allowed to work in the United Kingdom for a limited time to satisfy primarily non-economic objectives.
In June 2010, Britain's new Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition government brought in a temporary cap on immigration of those entering the UK from outside the EU, with the limit set as 24,100, in order to stop an expected rush of applications before a permanent cap is imposed in April 2011. The cap has caused tension within the coalition, with business secretary Vince Cable arguing that it is harming British businesses. Others have argued that the cap will have a negative impact on Britain's status as a centre for scientific research.
For family relatives of European Economic Area nationals living in the UK, there is the EEA family permit which enables those family members to join their relatives already living and working in the UK.
Though immigration is a matter that is reserved to the UK government under the legislation that established devolution for Scotland in 1999, the Scottish Government was able to get an agreement from the Home Office for their Fresh Talent Initiative which was designed to encourage foreign graduates of Scottish universities to stay in Scotland to look for employment. Fresh Talent is now closed following the introduction of the points-based system.
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