THE WORLD ATLAS

Empire · 1583–1997 · Europe

British Empire

Also known as United Kingdom, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Rupert's Land, Quebec, British American colonies, Acadian Peninsula (UK), Massachusetts Bay, Virginia, South Carolina, Jamaica (UK), Barbados (UK), Saint Kitts and Nevis (UK), Virgin Islands (UK), Cape Colony, Natal, New South Wales, New South Wales (UK), Western Australia (UK), Queensland (UK), South Australia (UK), Victoria (UK), Northern Territory (UK), British Guiana, Guiana, British East Africa, British Protectorate, British Somaliland, Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Mesopotamia (GB), Mandatory Palestine (GB), Gold Coast (GB), Gold Coast, Yemen (UK), Oman (British Raj), Dominion of Newfoundland, Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Cyraneica (UK Lybia), Tripolitana (UK Lybia)

England's overseas expansion began with Atlantic claims and colonies in Virginia, New England and the Caribbean, built by chartered companies, sugar plantations and the slave trade. After union with Scotland in 1707, Britain beat France for North America and India in the Seven Years' War, then lost thirteen colonies in the American Revolution.

It rebuilt in Asia, Africa and the Pacific: the East India Company conquered India, convicts and settlers founded Australia, and in the scramble for Africa Britain took Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and lands from the Cape towards Cairo. Rule ranged from self-governing settler dominions to direct rule and indirect rule through princes and chiefs, all guarded by the Royal Navy. Two world wars drained its strength; India's independence in 1947 began rapid decolonisation, and Hong Kong's return to China in 1997 is often taken as the end.

Follow its story on the map

The Palace of Westminster in London, rebuilt 1840–76 after the fire of 1834
The Palace of Westminster in London, rebuilt 1840–76 after the fire of 1834 Diliff · CC BY-SA 2.5
Years
1583–1997
Capital
London
Greatest extent
1920, about 35.50 million km²
Region
Europe

c. 35.5M km² (Taagepera 1997); about a quarter of the world's land and a quarter of its people

Legacy

English became a global language, and parliamentary government, common law and railways spread with the empire, as did lasting scars from conquest, famine and partition. Most former colonies remain linked through the Commonwealth.

Timeline of British Empire

  1. England takes Jamaica from Spain

    Oliver Cromwell, ruling England after the civil wars, planned a 'Western Design' to break Spanish power in the Caribbean and win new colonies. In April 1655 an English fleet under William Penn landed thousands of soldiers under Robert Venables near Santo Domingo on Hispaniola, but the attack failed with heavy losses. To salvage the expedition, they attacked poorly defended Spanish Jamaica and captured it in May 1655, though escaped slaves known as Maroons kept up resistance in the interior. Spain formally ceded the island in 1670. Jamaica became one of England's most valuable Caribbean colonies, and remained British until independence in 1962.

  2. Acts of Union create the Kingdom of Great Britain

    England and Scotland had shared a monarch since 1603 but kept separate parliaments. Scotland's attempt to found its own colony at Darien in Central America in the late 1690s ended in disaster, costing a large share of Scottish capital and helping persuade its leaders to accept union. Both parliaments passed Acts of Union, and on 1 May 1707 the two kingdoms became a single state, the Kingdom of Great Britain, with Queen Anne as its sovereign and one parliament at Westminster. Scots gained full access to English trade and colonies, and from then on the empire was British rather than English.

  3. Treaty of Utrecht: Gibraltar, Menorca, Newfoundland and Acadia gained

    The War of the Spanish Succession was fought largely to stop France and Spain uniting under one Bourbon king. In the Peace of Utrecht, signed in 1713, Britain did well: Spain ceded the strategic ports of Gibraltar and Menorca, and France ceded Nova Scotia (Acadia), its claims to Newfoundland, lands around Hudson Bay and its half of Saint Kitts. Britain also won the Asiento, the contract to supply enslaved Africans to Spain's American colonies. The treaty made Britain the leading commercial power in Europe and strengthened its hold on North America and the Mediterranean.

  4. East India Company victory at Plassey brings Bengal under its control

    The British East India Company traded in Bengal, India's richest province, whose Nawab, Siraj ud-Daulah, had seized its base at Calcutta in 1756. A Company force under Robert Clive retook the city and then plotted with the Nawab's commander, Mir Jafar. On 23 June 1757 at Plassey, Clive's army of about 3,000 faced a Bengal army of around 50,000, but Mir Jafar's troops held back and the Nawab's army broke. Mir Jafar was made nawab as a Company puppet. Bengal came under the Company's de facto control, the beginning of British rule in India.

  5. Treaty of Paris ends the Seven Years' War with large gains

    The Seven Years' War (1756–63) was a global struggle between Britain and France, fought in Europe, North America, the Caribbean, West Africa and India. Britain won a string of victories and captured Canada, French islands in the Caribbean, French trading posts in India and Spanish Havana and Manila. By the Treaty of Paris, signed on 10 February 1763, Britain gave back some conquests but gained much of France's possessions in North America, including Canada, and Spain ceded Florida. The treaty marked the beginning of an era of British dominance outside Europe, and Britain now held all of eastern North America.

  6. Peace of Paris recognises the independence of the United States

    Disputes over taxation and self-government led thirteen British colonies in North America to rebel in 1775 and declare independence in 1776. With help from France, the Americans forced a British army to surrender at Yorktown in 1781, and the British government fell. Peace talks began in Paris in 1782, and on 3 September 1783 the Treaty of Paris recognised the independence of the United States, with land stretching west to the Mississippi River. Britain lost its most populous colonies, but kept Canada, and turned its attention increasingly to Asia, Africa and the Pacific.

  7. First Fleet founds a penal colony at Sydney

    After losing the American colonies, Britain needed somewhere new to send convicts, and the naturalist Joseph Banks, who had sailed with James Cook along Australia's east coast in 1770, urged a colony at Botany Bay. The First Fleet of eleven ships under Captain Arthur Phillip left Portsmouth on 13 May 1787 with over 1,400 convicts, marines, sailors and officials. It reached Botany Bay on 18 January 1788, but Phillip chose Port Jackson to the north instead, arriving there on 26 January 1788 and founding a settlement at Sydney Cove. The penal colony of New South Wales was the start of British settlement in Australia, which spread across the continent and devastated its Aboriginal peoples.

  8. Treaty of Nanking: Hong Kong Island ceded by China

    British merchants smuggled opium from India into China to pay for tea, and when the Qing government enforced its ban by seizing British merchants' opium stocks in 1839, Britain went to war. British warships and troops defeated Qing forces along the coast and up the Yangtze, and threatened Nanjing. On 29 August 1842, aboard HMS Cornwallis, China signed the Treaty of Nanking: it paid an indemnity, opened five treaty ports to British trade, and ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain in perpetuity. Hong Kong became a key British base and trading port in East Asia, and remained British until 1997.

  9. After the 1857 rebellion, the Crown takes direct rule of India

    The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny of the East India Company's Indian soldiers and spread across northern India before British forces crushed it. The British government decided the Company could no longer be trusted to rule. The Government of India Act, passed on 2 August 1858, abolished the Company's rule and transferred its territories, armies and powers to the Crown, with a Secretary of State for India in London and a viceroy in India. Queen Victoria's rule over India, the British Raj, lasted until 1947 and made India the centrepiece of the empire.

  10. British occupation of Egypt

    Egypt was nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, but its ruler, the Khedive, owed huge debts to European banks, and the Suez Canal, opened in 1869, was Britain's main route to India. In 1881 an army officer, Ahmed 'Urabi, led a nationalist movement that took power. In July 1882 the British fleet bombarded Alexandria, and an army of over 40,000 under Garnet Wolseley landed in the Suez Canal zone and crushed 'Urabi's forces at Tel el-Kebir on 13 September. Britain occupied Egypt, ruling it in practice for decades while leaving the Khedive in place.

  11. Empire at its greatest extent, enlarged by League of Nations mandates

    After the First World War the colonies of Germany and lands of the Ottoman Empire were shared out among the victors as League of Nations mandates. Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, Tanganyika and parts of Cameroon and Togoland, while the Dominions took others. By 1920 the British Empire covered about 35.5 million km², roughly a quarter of the world's land, and in 1913 it had ruled some 412 million people, 23 per cent of the world's population. It was the largest empire in history, though nationalist movements in Ireland, India and Egypt were already challenging it.

  12. Statute of Westminster makes the Dominions self-governing

    The Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Newfoundland and the Irish Free State had long governed themselves at home, and their sacrifices in the First World War strengthened demands for equal status. At the Imperial Conference of 1926 the Balfour Declaration described Britain and the Dominions as equal, autonomous communities. The Statute of Westminster, passed on 11 December 1931, put this into law, removing nearly all of the British Parliament's power to legislate for the Dominions. The Dominions became independent states linked by loyalty to the Crown, and the empire began to turn into the Commonwealth.

  13. India and Pakistan become independent on 15 August

    The Indian independence movement, led by the Indian National Congress and figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, had grown in strength, and after the Second World War Britain could no longer hold India. With the Muslim League demanding a separate state, British India was divided along religious lines. At midnight on 14–15 August 1947 the independent dominions of India and Pakistan came into existence. Partition displaced between 12 and 20 million people, and somewhere between 200,000 and 2 million died in the violence. The loss of India, the empire's largest possession, began the rapid end of British rule in Asia and Africa.

  14. Suez Crisis exposes Britain's decline as a world power

    In July 1956 Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal, still largely controlled by British and French shareholders. France, and then Britain, secretly agreed with Israel that it would invade Egypt, giving them a pretext to step in, as later revealed in the Protocol of Sèvres. Israel attacked on 29 October, and after issuing an ultimatum, Britain and France joined in on 31 October, later landing troops at Port Said. Under heavy pressure from the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Nations, they quickly halted and withdrew. The crisis showed that Britain could no longer act as a great power without American support, and it sped up decolonisation.

  15. Hong Kong handed over to China

    Hong Kong Island had been ceded to Britain in 1842 and Kowloon in 1860, but most of the territory, the New Territories, was leased from China in 1898 for 99 years. With the lease due to expire, Britain and China signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, agreeing that the whole colony would return to China under the principle of 'one country, two systems'. At midnight on 1 July 1997 sovereignty passed to the People's Republic of China, in a ceremony attended by Prince Charles and the last governor, Chris Patten. Although fourteen small overseas territories remain British, the handover symbolised for many the end of the British Empire.

Periods and reigns

Rulers

Realms on the map

Wars

Chapters

Sources