Law,+Justice,+citizenship,+stagnation-British+Empire



The British Empire is the largest empire in the world spanning over 50 million square kilometers, almost a quarter of the world’s landmass. The British Empire was comprised of the dominions, colonies, protectorate(a state controlled and protected by another), mandates(an official order to do something) and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1922 the British Empire held sway over about 458 million people, one-quarter of the world's population at the time. As a result, its political, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread. There is an old saying that says “the sun never sets on the British Empire" meaning that its span on the globe ensured that the sun would always shine on British territory. 

 British Empire: Laws, Justice and citizenship 

The rise of the First British Empire was when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496 King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration commissioned John Cabot, an Italian navigator and explorer whose 1497 discoveries of parts of North America is usually referred to as the one of they first European Voyager to travel to North America  to lead a voyage to discover a route to Asia via the North Atlantic. Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after the discovery of America, and although he successfully made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland there was no colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but nothing was heard of his ships again. No further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Elizabeth I, during the last decades of the 16th century. In 1578, Queen Elizabeth I told Humphrey Gilbert to discover new land overseas. That year, Gilbert sailed for West India with the intention of establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic. Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584 to find the colony of Roanoke on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but due to the lack of supplies the colony failed to stay strong. In 1603, King James VI of Scotland ascended to the English throne and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted to other nations. The British Empire got stronger during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of private companies, most notably the English East India Company, to administer colonies and overseas trade. Until the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after the American War of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has subsequently been referred to as the "First British Empire"



England's first permanent settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown, led by Captain John Smith and managed by the Virginia Company. In the mid 17th century England took a lot of the Americas. In North America the British forced the Indians, igneous to the land off their land. This led to a long and bitter war called the American Revolution where the Americans fought for their independence and justice. The American colonists were inferior to the British Empire due to their size and little experience in fighting at war. The first conflict between the British and Americans was at Lexington, Massachusetts, on April 19th, 1775.The Americans were much inferior to the British as 700 British troops fought against 75 American militiamen. The colonists were anticipating this attack on Lexington because silversmith Paul Revere and his fellow patriots William Dawes and Samuel Prescott warned them in the Midnight ride. The Midnight Ride occurred on the night of April 18/April 19, 1775, when he and William Dawes were instructed by Dr. Joseph Warren to ride from Boston to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams of the movements of the British Army, which was beginning a march from Boston to Lexington, ostensibly to arrest Hancock and Adams and seize the weapons stores in Concord. Shortly after the British troops killed 8 colonists in Lexington they marched towards Concord, Massachusetts. Several units of minutemen were waiting for them. Minutemen were militia fighters that pledged to be ready at a minute’s notice. The Second Continental Congress decided to form an army lead by George Washington.

In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet, Common Sense, convinced many that the only course was independence. In the same year, the Continental Congress wrote the Declaration of Independence. On Christmas Day in 1776, Washington led his army across the Delaware River and took the British troops by surprise. The battle of Saratoga, in New York, was a turning point in the war. After the Americans won there, The European nations lent support to the colonial cause. Benjamin Franklin was a hero to the colonists as he convinced France to help and eventually convinced Spain too. From this movement the Americans started winning lots of conflicts. Instead of using normal fighting methods, the colonists used the guerilla warfare method. This was a sneaky fighting method where the Americans would wait for the British. In 1781, at the battle of Yorktown, Virginia, American and French forces fought against the British in the war’s final battle. They defeated the British general, Lord Cornwallis. In British law, the Golden rule, or British rule, is a form of statutory interpretation that allows a judge to depart from a word's normal meaning in order to avoid an absurd result.

 Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial century", around 25,899,881 km2 of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire. Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in central Asia. Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the Pax Britannica. Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many countries, such as China and Argentina.

Stagnation (a period of no action, causing decline and loss of great power) and internal pressure that lead to collapse

At the height of their power, the British Empire was enormous and was considered indestructible but eventually like any empire it leads to stagnation. For the British Empire, stagnation started during the high tide of imperialism from 1897 to 1907. The Boer War (1899-1902) against the independent Boer republics of the South African interior proved longer and highly priced than the British expected, and although they won the "dirty little war" the British saw their world position erode. Germany separated Samoa with the United States, and the Hawaiian Islands. The Kaiser, influenced by his envy of Britain, his own fondness for seafaring, and the worldwide impact of The Influence of Sea Power upon History by the American naval scholar, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan determined that Weltpolitik was impossible without a great High Seas Fleet. Because they lost Sea power lots of Islands got separated from the British Empire as other countries such as France, Russia, Japan, and the United States became stronger.

The emergence of the 20th century was also a time of anxiety for the British Empire as well. Challenged for the first time by the naval and colonial might of many other industrializing nations such as France. Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain began at once to sound out Berlin on the prospect of global collaboration. A British demarche was precisely what the Germans had been expecting, but three attempts to reach an understanding between 1898 and 1901, led to nothing. From 1900, chancellor, Bernhard Furst von Bulow, shared the Kaiser's and Holstein's ambitions for world power. The old European balance of power was giving way to a new world balance, then the future would surely belong to the British an Americans and the Russians unless Germany were able to achieve its own place in the sun. Bulow proposed to have more encounters on sea to gain power and worldwide recognition. The failure of the Anglo-German agreement led to rivalry with the two countries.

Shortly after World War II between 1945-1997 came the age of stagnation, decolonization and decline. After World War II much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, was in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, which have both gained lots of power. Britain was left virtually bankrupt, with failure only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a $3.5 billion loan from the United States, the last installment of which was repaid in 2006.

At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations. The situation was complicated further by the increasing rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union. Plus both nations were opposed to European colonialism. In practice, however, American anti-Communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, and therefore the United States supported the continued existence of the British Empire where it kept Communist expansion in check. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to five million, three million of whom were in Hong Kong.

The pro-decolonization government elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the biggest issue facing the Empire, that of Indian independence. India's two independence movements are the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed as to how it should be implemented. Congress favored a unified Indian state. Increasing civil unrest and the rebellion of the Royal Indian Navy during 1946 led Attlee to promise independence in 1948. The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan. Millions of Muslims subsequently crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus in the reverse direction, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of the British Raj and Ceylon gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan and Ceylon became members of the Commonwealth, though Burma chose not to join.

The British Mandate of Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India. The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to get their country back after Nazi genocide in the World War II. Rather than dealing with the issue, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve, which it did by voting for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Following the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin. Guerrilla fighters were primarily Malayan-Chinese Communists meaning the British attempt to quell the uprising that was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been put a stop to, and independence would be granted. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and British North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-dominated Singapore was left out from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations. Brunei, which had been British territory since 1888, declined to join the union and maintained its status until independence in 1984.

<span style="font-family: Tahoma,Geneva,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">The granting of independence to Zimbabwe, the New Hebrides in 1980, and Belize in 1981 meant that, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts the process of decolonization that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve to defend its remaining overseas territories was when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, supporting a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire. The 1982 Canada Act passed by the British parliament ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian regulation. Equivalent acts were passed for Australia and New Zealand in 1986. In September 1982, the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese government on the future of Britain's most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong. Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, Hong Kong Island had been given up to Britain "in perpetuity", but the vast majority of the colony was accounted for by the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99 year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997. Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China. A deal was reached in 1984 under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would become a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China, maintaining its way of life for at least 50 years. The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many, including Charles, Prince of Wales who was in attendance, "the end of Empire".

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 180%;">REFERENCES http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cabot http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/ushistory/britishempire/ http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/ushistory/americanrevolution/ http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/ushistory/declarationofindependence/ http://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/ushistory/causesoftheamericanrevolution/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Columbia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Empire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Borneo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj http://www.britishempire.co.uk/ http://www.britishempire.co.uk/article/liverpool.htm http://www.hyperhistory.net/apwh/essays/cot/t2w22britishgrowth.htm