Lecture 1 Introduction to the History of the British Empire

There have been 4 centuries of spread outwards from the central Islands of the U.K since

Henry VII. He first had to put an end to the Civil War, and then he developed the navy to

secure English defence and safety for merchants. This was followed by expansion overseas. He

put heavy duties on imported and exported goods by foreigners as English trade at that time

was almost all carried out by foreign merchants.

The British Empire took rise in the wake of merchant adventurers whom Henry VII helped

to build up their trade in English cloth, in Germany and central Europe. As England had been

so busy with Civil Wars, it did not take part in the discovery of the world as done by Spain and

Portugal. Henry VII was induced by the news of Columbus in 1492 in discovering new islands

in America, to give John Cabot (Venetian), the permission to find Newfoundland. The

mission ended in failure. Nothing was heard of the expedition, or of John Cabot, ever since.

The second fleet sent in 1498 ended in failure too. This expedition took place because the King

was more interested in the more-distant spiceries in the Eastern most part of Asia. This new

failure led to Englishmen’s loss of interest in exploration overseas for many years. In 1534, the

French discovered Canada by Jacques Cartier.

The British were so jealous that, under Edward I, the great London merchants subscribed

money to found a company called “Merchant Adventures For the Discovery of New Trade”

to sail round the North Cape and Richard Chancellor opened the Muscovy trade through the

White Sea, then Levant or Turkey company was founded in London, first by a roundabout

way, then by way of the Mediterranean. Then there was Sir Humphery Gilbert’s idea of finding

a passage to Cathay (North China)by the North-West passage. This was under Queen Elizabeth

I who was officially at peace and led to the founding of the Cathay Company which failed with

martin Frobisher.

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 Then, there was the privateering trade by Devon and Plymouth seamen against the

Spaniards and the Portuguese. There was also English smuggling of slaves illegally bought and

sold to the Spaniards. In 1577,Queen Elizabeth I allowed Francis Drake to plunder his way

into the dangerous Magellan Straits(a short sea passage) into the Pacific with the idea of

reaching the spiceries by sailing westwards, and possibly of finding rich “Terra Australis” in

the south.

He got to the South Sea where the Spaniards were defenceless and unguarded. He then

went to Peru and Nova Albion (San Francisco) which he took for the name of Queen Elizabeth

just as Frobisher had done in the Arctic. These were the first colonial annexations ever made

by Englishmen, but the latter did not live in California till nearly 3 centuries later. His voyage

round the world obtained for England a treaty, a share of the Eastern trade, with the rulers of

the spiceries. He returned to England by way of the Cape of Good Hope (under Portuguese

monopoly)

Elizabeth was not yet ready to challenge the claims of Spain and Portugal to be the sole

rulers of the seas of the new World and the East, but Drake pointed the way to find a new

English Empire. Elizabeth was the leader of the Protestant nations and became a potential

competitor for colonial trade.