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Chap 1

The document provides an overview of the origins and rise of the British Empire from the 15th century onwards. It discusses how the foundations were laid through early explorations commissioned by King Henry VII and how the empire expanded further under Queen Elizabeth I. It then outlines the establishment of the first British Empire through plantations in Ireland and colonies in North America and India. Finally, it introduces the rise of the second British Empire between 1783 and 1815 following the American Revolutionary War.

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124 views

Chap 1

The document provides an overview of the origins and rise of the British Empire from the 15th century onwards. It discusses how the foundations were laid through early explorations commissioned by King Henry VII and how the empire expanded further under Queen Elizabeth I. It then outlines the establishment of the first British Empire through plantations in Ireland and colonies in North America and India. Finally, it introduces the rise of the second British Empire between 1783 and 1815 following the American Revolutionary War.

Uploaded by

jul123456
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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BRITISH CIVILIZATION

CHAPTER1
OUTLINE
1. The first British empire
2. The rise of second British Empire
3. The British Empire during WW1
4. the British Empire during WW2
5. Decolization abd decline
Introduction
• The British Empire was the largest empire in history and the greatest the world has ever known,
for over a century. A story of brilliant contrasts, of triumph and disaster, of wise rule and bitter
oppression, a story that shows what Britain took from the world but what it gave to the world too.

• The Empire was a product of the Age of Discovery, which began with the maritime explorations of
the 15th century, that sparked the era of the European colonial empires.
1. By 1921 the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people,
2. approximately ¼ of the world’s population.
3. It covered about 36.7 milloin km² (14.2 million square miles), about a quarter of Earth’s
total land area.
As a result, its political, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread. At the peak of its power, it was often
said that
« the sun never sets on the British Empire »

because its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its
numerous colonies or subject nations.
• During the five decades following World War II, most of the territiories of the Empire became
independent.
• Many went to join the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states. Some
have retained the British monarch as their head of state to become indepedent Commonwealth
realms.
1. The first British empire

• Its Origins (1497-1583) :


• The foundations of the British Empire were laid at a time before the creation of the
• United Kingdom of Great Britain, when England and Scotland were seperate kingdoms. In
• 1496 king Henry VII (Tudor) of England following the successes of Portugal and Spain in
• overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead a voyage to discover a route to Asia
• via the North Atlantic. Cabot sailed in 1497, and though he successfully made landfall on the
• coast of Canada (mistakenly believing, like Christopher Columbus five years earlier, that he
• had reached Asia), no attempt at establishing a colony was made. Cabot led another voyage to
• the Americas the following year but nothing was heard from his ships again.
• No further attempts to establish English colonies overseas were made until the reign of
• Elizabeth I. During the last decades of the 16th century, enmity and rivalry between Roman
• Catholic Spain and Protestant England during the Anglo-Spanish Wars led to the English
• Crown sanctioning English privateers such as John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake to engage
• in piratical attaks on 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, to rival those of Spain and
• Portugal. By this time, Spain was firmly entrenched in the Americas, Portugal had established
• a string of trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China,
• Plantations of Ireland :
• English overseas colonisation is a relative late comer in comparison
to Spain and Portugal one, since England had been firstly engaged
in a form of ‘domestic colonisation’ in Ireland.
• The Plantations of Ireland, run by English colonists, were a
precursor to the overseas Empire as observed by Queen Elizabeth I
« Ireland hath very good timber and convenient havens, and if the
Spaniard might be master of them, he would in a short space be
master of the seas, which is our chiefest force ». (Trevelyan, 1987 :
265).
• After the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, Irish catholics were
dispossessed of their lands, and replaced with a Protestant
landowning class from England and Scotland.
The rise of second British Empire
(1783-1815)

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