THE BRITISH EMPIRE

“The Earth is littered with the ruins of empires that once believed they were eternal.”
This quote, which can be attributed to the great English poet Percy Shelley, has been proven time
and time again by history. However, out of all the empires that have risen and fallen throughout
the centuries, the most recent of them all still looms like a shadow over our past and present: the
British Empire. Today, we will be discussing its history, its impact, and its legacy.
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates,
and other territories that were brought under the sovereignty of the crown of Great Britain and
the administration of the British government over the course of about three centuries. Its origins
are rather humble: it all started with a failed attempt in the late 1500s to set up a colony on
Roanoke Island in North America, now part of the modern-day USA. A few years later, in 1607,
the first successful British settlement was established in Jamestown. Thirteen North American
colonies were established; although they eventually won their independence from Britain, the
Empire still continued to spread. At its height in the 19th and early 20th century, it was the
largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913, the
British Empire ruled over 412 million people, 23 per cent of the world population at the time,
and by 1920, it covered 35.5 million km2, 24 per cent of the Earth's total land area. At the peak
of its power, it was described as "the empire on which the sun never sets", as the Sun was always
shining on at least one of its territories.
However, for the people living in the colonies, life wasn’t always so bright. British rule
often meant that their traditional languages, religions and ways of living were replaced with the
English language, Christianity and British systems of government and education. To this day,
English remains the official language of many ex-colonies. The number of speakers of some
indigenous languages, for example that of the Māori in New Zealand, has declined drastically.
Moreover, the colonies were generally run by British government officials who lived in the
colony and not by the indigenous people themselves. Taxes on colonized people were often high
and the British exploited natural resources for their own financial gain. British laws were brought
to colonies often without taking into account the cultural differences between the people of the
colonies and the British. As such, natives would be considered “savages” simply because they
did not follow the British way of life. This allowed the colonizers to continuously mistreat them,
which, in the case of Native Americans, led to a dramatic decrease in population, bordering on
extermination.
The British Empire eventually saw its own decline. By the turn of the 20th century, fears
had begun to grow in Britain that it would no longer be able to defend the entirety of the empire
while at the same time maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation". After a rough First World
War and a murky inter-war period, the Second World War weakened the empire even further by
undermining Britain's control of politics in India, inflicting long-term economic damage, and
irrevocably changing geopolitics by pushing the Soviet Union and the United States to the centre
of the global stage. It was also around this time that a decolonization movement began; by the
1980s, it was largely complete. India won its independence in 1947, with other colonies
following suit some years later. The 1980s saw Canada, Australia, and New Zealand sever their
final constitutional links with Britain. In September 1982 the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher,
travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese Communist government, on the future of
Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong. A deal was reached in
1984— Hong Kong would become a special administrative region of the People's Republic of
China. The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many "the end of the Empire".
Today, Britain retains sovereignty over only 14 territories outside the British Isles. Still,
decades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on the
independent nations that rose from the British Empire.