Everyone with even the slightest interest in politics has noticed more than once that the population and the government of the United Kingdom consider themselves to be representatives of a country that occupies a leading position in the Western Hemisphere. This belief did not develop in a vacuum. For several centuries, Great Britain really controlled vast territories scattered throughout the world.
British colonial empire
The map of a small island state began to increase at the very beginning of the 17th century. It was then, in 1607, that the British founded the first settlement in North America. At the same time, with the emergence of the East India Company (a commercial enterprise created by decree of Elizabeth I), the colonization of India began.
After the completion of the Bourgeois Revolution (1645), which marked the transition of the state from an absolutely monarchical to a bourgeois system, England, through armed confrontation with competing Spain and France, took control of the main partNorth American continent.
The Royal African Company, whose main source of income was the slave trade, as well as gold mining on the western coast of Africa, was established in 1660 and lasted until 1752. It is the slave trade (about 3.5 million people were transported) that is considered the economic basis of the First British Empire.
Maps changed throughout the entire period of its existence. In subsequent years, as a result of an expansive (aggressive) policy, all of India, the island of Ceylon, Australian and New Zealand territories came under the control of the country.
The status of the largest colonial empire, "on which the sun never sets", England received by the middle of the 19th century.
The British Empire at its peak
The map of all the possessions of the United Kingdom of that period is conventionally divided into two parts:
- colonies consisting of settlers;
- conquered territories.
Inhabitants of the resettlement colonies were mostly English migrants. In favorable conditions for the population, a regime of administrative and later political autonomy was soon established.
Thirteen metropolitan areas (territories ruled by the owner state) were cut off from the map of the British Empire due to the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), caused by exorbitant taxation by the authorities. The passing of the British North America Act changed the administrative status of Canada. As a result of the Constitution of 1867, shebecame a dominion of Great Britain (an independent state within the empire, recognizing the supremacy of the monarch, and ruled by a local governor-general).
Managing conquered lands
The caste structure of society, tribal disagreements, territorial and linguistic disunity, fragmentation (more than 600 fiefs) contributed to the formation of the second type of colonies on the lands of India. Following the troops, merchants and industrialists moved to the occupied lands. Territories were subjected to systematic robbery, English customs and language were imposed, national identity was limited.
The motto of politics has become the slogan: "Divide and Conquer", according to which the best system for managing the occupied territories is to incite hostility between population groups and use it in the interests of the conquerors. Numerous rebellions, the most famous of which was the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, were suppressed with unprecedented brutality.
Permanent military conflicts forced the government to revise the administrative system of India. The East India Company was disbanded, the behavior of whose representatives caused massive claims from the local population. The administration was headed by a Governor-General or Viceroy, who was subordinate to the Ministry of Indian Affairs, deliberately created to change the situation; The English queen was proclaimed Empress of India. Administrative reforms had onlyformal result and did not bring significant improvements to the lives of the local population.
Ireland, conquered in the 12th century and destroyed during the second military expansion, without a normally functioning economy, became part of the United Kingdom in 1800. The English aristocrats, who owned estates here, shamelessly oppressed the population. The Irish, who did not join the flow of mass immigration and remained in their native land, lived in extremely miserable conditions. The local liberation movement forced the government to change and in 1869-1870 it issued a series of decrees somewhat equalizing the rights of the Irish with the British. Unfortunately, the innovations affected only the we althy stratum of society.
Seizure of Dutch possessions
By the end of the century, industrial Germany and the United States replaced the UK from leading positions in the world economy, its leadership was lost. An increase in the number of colonies seemed the only way out for the English bourgeoisie. A number of Arab and African territories, as well as the rest of India (Burma), came under the control of the United Kingdom as a result of a series of brutal wars against the Netherlands. Map of the British Empire of the 19th century, a continental state with a territory of just over 200 thousand square meters. km and a population of less than 40 million people, was an empire with an area of more than 30 million square meters. km and a population of half a million people.
The collapse of the empire
Smallthe state, which had exorbitant imperial ambitions, at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century could no longer cope with the management of vast territories and was forced to make a number of concessions. Australia became a union of five administratively autonomous states and was cut off from the map of the British Empire following the Constitution of 1867, which united the Australian colonies of the United Kingdom. The Union of South Africa became a British dominion in 1910.
Due to the mass immigration from the British Isles of the English-speaking population to the dominion countries, a significant stratum of the literate population has been created there. The independence and role of controlled states in world political and economic processes increased. These trends contributed to the gradual reduction in the size of the map of the British Empire. In the first half of the 20th century, the British dominions united and received the name "Commonwe alth of Nations", which is still used today.
