The British Empire

Question: How did Britain become a colonial power?
Answer:

The British Empire was largely an accidental thing, the result of diverse impulses often satisfied in despite of the mother country. Britain’s expansion into the world at large began in the Americas with opportunist adventurers and speculative joint-stock expeditions, often supported by arbitrary land grants from the Crown that were scarcely capable of cartographic definition. Chartered colonies followed, but for many years the interest of the home government in overseas settlements was spasmodic. Colonial settlements grew haphazardly: by sectaries seeking religious freedom (or the freedom to practise religious intolerance); by Utopian experiments; by opportunist land grabbing; by governments seeking to rid themselves of anti-social or dissenting elements of the population. All of this was scarcely a formula for cohesion amongst the colonials or between the colonies and the homeland. That cohesion was supplied by commercial interests rather than by idealism or dissent.

Britain was not Persia or Macedon or Rome, driven by territorial imperatives to expand its land borders. Britain was an island nation that had, by the days of colonial acquisition, abandoned its territorial claims in France. Extra-continental settlement and trade allowed Britain to keep pace with its European neighbours, with the homeland as the economic hub; and imperial adventures added new dimensions to Britain's tactical adjustments to the European balance of power, necessary to avert potential threats to the state. Commercial efforts were encouraged by the issue of royal charters to trading companies; and as new lands, as far away as the Pacific, came within the European purview, pre-emptive settlement was considered a necessary precaution. A new curiosity, part of the wider Enlightenment, had stimulated exploration and scientific research: the primary purpose of James Cook's first voyage, commissioned by the Royal Society, was to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti; his last voyage included navigation of the west coast of North America in search of the North West Passage. (And the voyage that carried Darwin to the Galapagos some fifty-five years later was first and foremost a mapping and geological expedition on behalf of the Admiralty.) These and many more exploits boosted national pride in maritime heritage and expertise, an experise that was crucial the defense of the Realm and the Empire. When conflict with France in the Seven Years War led directly to the loss of the American colonies of the ‘First Empire’ merchant venturers had already laid the foundations of a second, especially in India and Africa.
 

Empires grow through the need to source and secure commodities, to protect markets for consumables and to defend the trading routes that service this two-way traffic. The embryonic ‘Second Empire’, essentially maritime, developed as a network of remote and widely scattered enterprises with extended lines of communication. Trading stations, and the staging posts required to service and secure the shipping lanes, created defensive exclusion zones through alliances with or oppression of local tribes and rulers. The territorial base expanded through necessity. But as borders extend, so do the resources required to defend them. Private armies increased the ambition and arrogance of the ex-patriate societies and abuses escalated, watched with growing concern by a home government whose attitude to Empire was more and more informed by a liberal paternalism underscored with civilising fervour and nonconformist religiosity. Intervention was called for, and for reasons that ranged from external threat to private greed to maladministration and corruption, Britain became, almost by default and sometimes reluctantly, a major colonial power.

The acquisition of empire was not universally welcomed. Taxation to support imperial adventures was seen by some as public subsidy of private ambition. Political power blocs emerged from the collaboration of colonial administrations with military cliques. Communication with the outposts of empire was slow and unreliable, and expansionist escapades were carried out without reference to government. At home the influence of imperial/military cliques increased and became inextricable from the military and political establishment. It is interesting to speculate how a fragile British democracy might have evolved had not the High Command been substantially discredited during the Great War.

The British Empire survived the aftermath of a war that had swept away other, older, empires; indeed, overseas responsibilities increased through League of Nations mandates to administer Ottoman territories in the Middle East. But the seeds of separatism had been planted at home and abroad, and unrest was quelled, sometimes brutally, by anachronistic rearguard actions. The Second World War was the watershed. Education in the services had produced a better informed soldiery; and long years away from home had reduced the willingness of a citizen army, maintained by protracted conscription, to police an empire that was seen as increasingly irrelevant to a modern state with a newly elected socialist government. Events in India, Palestine and elsewhere found Britain as the unhappy arbitrator between opposing factions and there were aberrations, in Suez and in British territories in Africa and the Middle East, when backward-looking politicians tried to reassert Britain’s role on the world stage. But, in spite of a substantial conservative element and a school curriculum that looked to Empire as an integral part of the national myth, the long dismemberment had begun – whether or not it was welcomed by territories that felt threatened by more powerful neighbouring states, or by minorities at risk from their co-nationals.

A good recent book is by Lawrence James: "The Rise and Fall of the British Empire".

For much more, go to the History Unlimited British Empire page.