The Rise and Fall of the Briti
Britain began to become an empire as early as the seventeenth century, and it lasted until the mid nineteenth century. The Empire survived many obstacles and rulers. Some rulers however strengthened the Empire and Britain in general. During the seventeenth century Britain fought several very successful wars against the Dutch, French and Spanish. As Kelley Ross claims in her article The Worlds Greatest Empires, these campaigns left Britain with much of the eastern coast of North America, the St. Lawrence Basin in Canada, parts of Africa for slave acquisition, areas of the Caribbean and political interests in India (24). At this point the British Empire had begun formation. The Empire lasted through many rulers, gathering more colonies and power with the passage of time. However, no ruler controlled and caused as much growth in the vast empire as Queen Victoria. The British Empire was formed with mercantilist ideas, headed by Cromwell and the Stuart's; however the empire was at its peak during the reign of Queen Victoria. But because of twentieth century superpowers like Germany and the USSR, as well as uprisings in attempts at independence by many of Britain's colonies, the Empi
"The growth of the British Empire was due in large part to the ongoing competition for resources and markets which existed over a period of centuries between England and her Continental rivals, Spain, France, and Holland (Sears 23)." England's first empire was a mercantilist one, led by both Cromwell and the Stuart's. They outlined ideas for the further colonization of Europe, and their mercantilist views held true until the late eighteenth century. As R.A Huttenback, author of The British Imperial Experience writes, the first British Empire came to an end after the American Revolution. However the purpose and policies of the Empire stayed the same (26-27). They were to gain as much foreign territory as possible, thus benefiting Britain with both raw materials and potential markets (Sears 24). Britain's relations with the Commonwealth of Nations turned out to be very important during WWI. The Commonwealth of Nations assisted the British war effort. But Britain's losses to Japan and the Far East showed how weak they had become and the fact that the resources necessary to maintain the empire were no longer at Britain's disposal (Houghton). WWI also showed new superpowers throughout Europe and Asia. The major powers included Italy, Japan, Germany, Russia, England, France, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, Turkey, and the United States. All had become world powers, and Germany and the United States had surpassed Britain industrially. And although World War I brought the British Empire to the peak of its expansion, when it gained the "new territories of Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Iraq, and several former German territories in Africa and Asia (Williamson 33)," the years that followed the war made it clear that Britain's reign as uncontested superpower was about to come to an end. Britain had become the leading industrial nation of Europe, and more and more of the world came under the domination of British commercial, financial, and naval power (Lloyd 16-17). However, the British power did not make the empire stable. Britain had been a mercantile empire since its creation, and by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the old mercantilist empire had been almost entirely abandoned. Several factors led up too the weakening of the mercantilist empire, and they were: "The abolition in 1807 of slavery in Britain itself, a movement led by the Evangelicals; by the freeing in 1833 of slaves held elsewhere in the Empire; the adoption, of a radical change in economic perspective (due in large part to the influence of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations), by Free Trade, which minimized the influence of the old oligarchic and monopolistic trading corporations; and by various colonial movements for greater political an
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Approximate Word count = 1849
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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