THE RISE OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE - THE ENGLISH COLONIES
No colonizing power of Europe has
had such uniform prosperity as Great Britain. The English attempts at colonization began at about the same time
as the Dutch. After many fruitless attempts to find a north-cast or north-west passage to the East Indies, English
vessels found their way round the Cape of Good Hope to the East Indies in 1591. It was not only in America that
the French and British interests clashed. The situation in India was a very interesting one. The great Mongol Empire
was in a condition of far-advanced decay. Much as in Germany the Great Mogul, like the Holy Roman Emperor, was
still legally overlord, but he exerted only a nominal authority except in the immediate neighbourhood of his capital.
This was the India into which the French and English were thrusting during the eighteenth century. Ever since Vasco
da Gama made his memorable voyage round the Cape of Good Hope to Calicut a succession of peoples had been fighting
for commercial and political footing in India and the East. The Portuguese had wrested the sea-trade of India from
the Red Sea Arabs. In the seventeenth century the Dutch had snatched it from their grasp.
By the opening of the eighteenth century both the English
and the French were in vigorous competition for trade and
privileges with the Dutch. The unscrupulous methods of their rivals
and the unsettled state of the country made it inevitable that the powers should arm and fortify their settlements,
and this armament made them attractive allies, for the native princes who divided India. It was entirely in the
spirit of the new European nationalist politics that when the French took one side the British should take the
other. The French appeared at first to maintain the superiority; but the British in turn got the upper hand, The
great English leader was Robert Clive (1725 - 1774) and his chief antagonist, Dupleix.
The war of the Austrian Succession saw the taking of Louisburg (1745) - the Gibraltar of the New World - by the British and of Madras by the French. By the treaty of Aix-la-.Chapelle (1748), which ended the war, these were exchanged, but nothing was settled permanently.
The rival ambitions of Great Britain and France in America and India had to be adjusted and the sword alone could do that. The French colony in America was sparsely populated, but it was united. The British, thirteen in number, were in separate governments, often ill. disposed to one another. Alter the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle events moved swiftly and the French, by the brilliant conception of a line of forts between north and south, seemed likely to gain a complete ascendancy. In 1754 Fort Duquesne, the last link in the chain, was built and war at once broke out.
Two years later the Seven Years War
(1756-1763) broke out in Europe. The French, realizing the inferiority of their fleet and the impossibility of
conveying an adequate number of troops to America, were making a bold attempt to "win Canada on the plains of Germany." Knowing full well the importance of Hanover to George III they felt
that, even if actually beaten in the New World, conquests in Europe would be an irresistible bargaining weapon
at the final settlement. It happened that they were defeated in all spheres of action, but not without a titanic
struggle.
The Seven Years' War started with the failure of Byng, owing to insufficient support, at Minorca while attempting
to prevent the French fleet from Toulon effecting a junction with that at Brest. Then Pitt came into power and
events moved fast and successfully for Britain. His policy, as regards the colonies, was three-fold. In the first
place he blockaded the French fleets in their ports while attacking their colonies. He kept the French army distracted
by invasions on the French coast as, for instance, at Rochefort (1757). This policy raised hostile criticism at
home as being merely one for the "breaking
of windows with guineas."
But it had its effect. Finally, as in the cases of Hawke, Clive and Wolfe,
he set aside seniority for merit.
In 1759 - the annus mirabilis - the conquest of Canada was completed when Wolfe, by a bold stroke, scaled the Heights of Abraham and took Quebec, Boscawen defeated the Toulon squadron at Lagos, and Hawke completely destroyed the Brest fleet at Quiberon Bay.
The Treaty of Paris (1763), which ended the war, saw the fall of France as a colonial power. Great Britain was established as a maritime and colonial power and the Indian Empire founded. In India there was little organization. By North's Regulating Act of 1773 some unity of control was secured but the bill proved a failure and, a constitutional crisis having been forced by Fox's India Bill, Pitt passed, in 1781, an act reorganizing our Indian possessions. A governor-general and a board of control were appointed by the king and the government became directly responsible for our Indian policy. Though still under the dual control of the government and the company, affairs remained settled until 1857.
In a survey of the period between the fall of Napoleon and the close of the nineteenth century two facts emerge; first that a British army had appeared only once to fight on European battlefields (during the Crimean War); secondly, that British troops were called, in the cause of the Empire, to fight in nearly every part of the world.
The British Empire developed enormous prosperity during the 19th century, which brought with it responsibilities. While Britain looked with warm sympathy on the struggle of rising nationalities and the growth of liberal ideas in Europe, she had no desire to enter the lists as champion of the oppressed. She had work enough to do in the administration of her colonial empire. Britain received a lesson, in the revolt of the American colonies, and recognised the right of a nation to rule itself without foreign interference, and the right of the people within that nation to share in their own government. They are principles which lie at the root of the British constitution, making certain at any rate that Great Britain will not in the future be guilty either of indifference or of want of sympathy in dealing with any difficulties.
By the victory of Clive at Plassey (1757) over the army of Bengal and by 1761 the British found themselves completely dominant in the Indian peninsula. It laid the foundation of exclusive British sovereignty in India.
The assumption of a closer interest in India by the British Parliament coincides with the career of Warren Hastings. No man did greater work in the face of such appalling difficulties. Not only did he have to face the bitterest open hostility of his own council, but the whole weight of a series of wars was laid upon his shoulders. The French did all in their power to help Britain's foes, but in India she lost not one inch of territory. That was the record of Hastings, which entitles him to rank as the greatest of the great Englishman who founded the Indian Empire. By the end of the Napoleonic wars the power of the Marathas, armed robbers who swept over middle India, had been broken, and the British were enabled for a time to turn their whole attention to the reconstruction of the new empire. Briefly, Britain's ideal was to retain all that was best in Indian law, custom and religion while introducing such a measure of Western education as would in the end fit India. for self-government. India was in truth to be held in trust.
The next forty years were spent in organization and in further annexations, such as that of the Punjab (1849),
creating a strong "buffer" against the inroads of the Afghans in the North-West. Meanwhile the East India
Company still lived on, reigning but not governing, until the Mutiny put an end to its existence.
The Mutiny (1857), like most revolutions, was due to a number of causes. It came suddenly and its magnitude was unforeseen. Yet on the whole it was a military rather than a national rising, for India was not a nation. The outbreak was due far more to over-hasty reforms than to a wave of fanaticism. It was a salutary warning that with the best intentions and excess of zeal a Western reformer can dangerously unsettle the life of an Oriental people. By the end of 1857 the worst was over, and by the following June tranquility was restored except in a few isolated regions. The Mutiny swept the Indian sky clear of many clouds. With justice it has been described as "reactionary in its causes and revolutionary in its effects"; it cleared the air for reconstruction and improvement. On the suppression of the Indian mutiny (1857 - 58) the government of India was transferred to the crown by act of parliament in 1858. "for the better government of India".
The Great Mogul, nominally their overlord, became in effect their puppet. They levied taxes over great areas; they exacted indemnities for real or fancied opposition.By the middle of the next century the British territory embraced, with the exception of a few dependent states, nearly the whole of India, and this vast territory was still under the government of the East India Company - a mercantile company, controlled indeed by parliament, but exercising many of the most important functions of an independent sovereignty.
In 1861 provincial Legislative Councils were created which consisted in part of Indian members. The educated Indians were not content with this, and in 1885 a National Congress met at Bombay, but its subsequent meetings showed that it was more concerned with political agitation than social reforms. An Act of 1892 which added more Indian members to the Legislative Councils increased neither their responsibility nor their fitness to govern.
Britain's chief concern in the Indian Mutiny had been the North-West frontier in the face of a Russian advance, and this concern led her once more into war with the Afghans, but by the end of the century improved relations with Russia secured a complete understanding (1907). In 1917 the Government pledged itself "to increase the association of Indians in every branch of the administration."
Jamaica and many of the West Indian islands, were among our oldest possessions, acquired from the Spanish. Colonies were established in the West India Islands, including Barbados, half of St. Christopher's (1625), and soon after many smaller islands. Newfoundland was taken possession of in 1583, colonized in 1621 and 1633.
AFRICA
In Western Africa are the colonies of Lagos, the Gold Coast, Gambia, and Sierra Leone - all, except Lagos, ancient possessions of the British crown. Other possessions were British East Africa and Nigeria.
In South Africa Cape Colony, first settled by the Dutch in 1652, finally became an English colony in 1815. The predominant question in South Africa was one of Boer or Briton. The rugged and obstinate Boer farmer, of Dutch, Protestant stock, had little in common with the eager sympathies, progressive ideas, and somewhat ignorant sentimentality which characterized a large portion of the British public in the nineteenth century. It was the native question which first produced friction between Boer and Briton. In 1833 the British abolished slavery in the dominions, the direct result of the humanitarian sentiments of the century. But what rankled equally in the mind of the Boer was the conferment, five years previously, of the same political rights as the European possessed upon the native races of the Cape. In this difference in view, besides smaller grievances, was found the motive for the Great Trek (1836), when a large portion of the Boer population left Cape Colony and went north and east to seek some place where they would be left in peace.
In 1843 Natal became an English colony , in 1874 the Fuji Islands, and in 1884 part of New Guinea, were annexed crown colonies.
In 1877 the Transvaal was annexed, an annexation which had two results. In the first place it angered the Zulus,
who bordered on the Transvaal, and led to the Zulu War (1879). The second result was a rising of the Transvaal
Boers and the first Boer War (1881). Under-estimating the fighting capacity of the Boers, the British sustained
several defeats and the crowning disaster at Majuba. But the government of Gladstone continued to negotiate for
a settlement, and in 1881 Boer Independence was recognized. The trouble was not yet at an end, and the South African
War (1899-1902) was yet to come. Britain was the most unpopular nation in the world, and though Europe watched
events with keen and hostile interest, no other power joined the Boers, and, to the surprise of the world, the
war ended in Britain's favour. For three years Lord Milner supervised the reconstruction of the colonies and in
1906, only four rears after the close of the war, full self-government was granted - an experiment which, though
rash, has been wonderfully justified by its success.
More recent annexations were Bechuanaland (1885), Zululand (1887), British South and Central Africa (1888-89), Orange River Colony (1900).
THE AMERICAN COLONIES
The discoveries of the Cabots, following soon after the voyages of Columbus, gave the English crown a claim to North America, which, though allowed to lie dormant for nearly a century, was never relinquished, and which, in the reign of Elizabeth, led to colonization on a large scale.
The discovery of the huge continent of America, thinly inhabited, undeveloped, and admirably adapted for European settlement was as if the peoples of Europe had come into some splendid legacy. But it meant no more to them than a fresh occasion for atrocious disputes. Spain, who claimed first and most, made no better use of her possession than to bleed herself nearly to death therein.
Walter Raleigh aspired to give England "a better Indies than the King of Spain." Raleigh's settlement on Roanoke Island (N. Carolina) in 1585 failed to become permanent, but in 1607 the colonists sent by the London Company to Chesapeake Bay founded James town, on the James River, in Virginia. The absolutist efforts of the Stuarts had the effect of driving out of England a great number of sturdy minded Protestants who settled in America, and particularly in New England, out of reach, as they supposed, of the king and his taxes. The next great settlement was that of the Pilgrim Fathers, who landed 2l st. Dec. 1620, in Massachusetts Bay. The colonization of New Hampshire, Maine, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, soon followed. In the State of New York and the Hudson River Territory the British found the Dutch already in possession; but in 1664 they seized the colony of New Amsterdam by force, changing its name to New York in honour of James, Duke of York. Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, and colonized with Quakers in 1682; Maryland in 1631 by a party from Virginia; Carolina in 1670 and Georgia in 1732 by colonies from England.
The Dutch never sent out colonizers
of like quality, and Huguenot refugees from the Netherlands and France found refuge in Protestant England. The
Dutch settlements, with the Swedish, soon fell to England, and in 1674 Nieuw Amsterdam became New York. By 1750
British power was established along the east coast, in Newfoundland, and in the north, where the Hudson Bay Company
territories had been acquired by treaty from the French.
But France was pursuing a dangerous and alarming game. She had made real settlements in Quebec and Montreal, and
at New Orleans in the south, and by treaty with the Indians had pushed up the hinterland behind the British settlements.
Many old maps are to be found of this period designed to rouse the British to a sense of the "designs of France" in America.
In 1763 Canada was finally ceded to Great Britain, but but was a difficult problem owing to the numerical superiority of the French. In 1764 began the disputes between Britain and its North American colonies, which terminated with the acknowledgment of the independence of the United States.
The problem before Great Britain was a difficult one. How was a colony to be a 'daughter in her mother's house and a mistress in her own?' To British statesmen of all parties these two objects appeared, in the words of the Duke of Wellington, "completely incompatible."
In Canada, however, a solution was at last achieved. In 1791 Pitt divided Canada into Upper and Lower Canada - French and English - each had a governor, a legislative council nominated by the governor, and an elected assembly.
The western part of the rather indefinite French region of Louisiana, named after Louis XIV, remained outside British control. It was taken over by Spain, recovered by the French in 1800, and finally bought in 1803 by the United States government.
Discontent began to develop with this form of government 1815, the situation was aggravated by the fact that in Upper Canada the offices of state had become the monopoly of a few families, whilst in Lower Canada there was constant friction between the French and British colonists. Discontent came to a head in 1837, just after Queen Victoria's accession. Small rebellions were put down without much, difficulty but the country was full of unrest, and it seemed, in the words of Peel, that "another Ireland might grow up in every colony". In 1838, Lord Durham was sent with full powers to deal with the situation. In his report advocated, first, the grant to the colonial assembly of full control of nearly all internal affairs and, secondly, the union of the two provinces. The union was effected (1841) and a new constitution drawn up. In 1867 the two provinces were federated and the Dominion of Canada created. Gradually the great territories of the north and west were added. By 1905 the Dominion as we know it to-day was complete, and development was able to proceed unhampered by political disputes.
The early history of Australia is one of discovery rather than settlement.It was not until 1606, over a century after the discovery of America, that Australia was first sighted, probably by the Spanish admiral de Torres. In the course of the same century Tasmania was discovered.
The first British settlements of Australian were penal institutions, the colonies of Australia were gradually formed out of the original territories of New South Wales, and in the reign of William IV, as its capital Adelaide suggests, South Australia was founded and Victoria, whose capital Melbourne seems to perpetuate the connection of the Queen and her first prime minister, became a separate colony in 1851. Eight years later Queensland followed suit. In 1900 the various provinces were federated together and became the Commonwealth of Australia.
NEW ZEALAND
The two islands of New Zealand were annexed by Britain in 1840, but for a time there were severe hostilities with the native Maoris, who fought cleverly and bravely behind their fortified stockade. But the country prospered as a British colony and in 1855 it was granted a large measure of self government. Fifty years later it became the Dominion of New Zealand. In their government and policy the colonies of the great sub-continent and Oceania were perhaps the most democratic of the British Empire.
EURO - GREAT BRITAIN
Two colonies were acquired for military reasons - Gibraltar in 1704, and Malta. in 1800.
It is estimated that British colonies and dependencies embraced about one-fifth of the land surface of the globe and nearly the same proportion of the population.
