Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The British Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of joint-stock companies, most notably the East India Company, to administer colonies and overseas trade.
The following table gives gross domestic product (GDP) estimates of the British Empire and its territories in 1870 and 1913, as a percentage of the world economy and the empire's economy, along with comparisons to the United States and Russian Empire. The British imperial territory with the largest economy in 1870 was British India (including ...
British goods were also more expensive abroad because of Sterling's overvaluation, but inferior in quality compared to the products flooding the world market from the United States, Germany and Italy. Rapid decolonisation in the British Empire through the late 1950s and 1960s dealt a further blow to British industry.
In the end, the British Empire was defeated in the Revolutionary War and formally ceded parts of southwestern Canada to the new United States as part of the Treaty of Paris. During and after the Revolution, approximately 70,000 or 15% United Empire Loyalists fled the United States, with the rest of the 85% choosing to stay in the new nation. Of ...
The major multi-volume multi-author coverage of the history of the British Empire is the Oxford History of the British Empire (1998–2001), five-volume set, plus a companion series. [277] Douglas Peers says the series demonstrates that, "As a field of historical inquiry, imperial history is clearly experiencing a renaissance." [278]
This was particularly used by colonial empires like the British Empire to control their possessions in Africa and Asia, which was done through pre-existing indigenous power structures. Indirect rule was used by various colonial rulers such as: the French in Algeria and Tunisia , the Dutch in the East Indies , the Portuguese in Angola and ...
The British Nationality Act 1981, which entered into force on 1 January 1983, [143] abolished British subject status, and stripped colonials of their full British citizen of the United Kingdom and colonies, replacing it with British dependent territories citizenship, which entailed no right of abode or to work anywhere (other categories with ...
By the late 19th century, the British, through conquest or purchase, occupied most of the forts along the coast. Two major factors laid the foundations of British rule and the eventual establishment of a colony on the Gold Coast: British reaction to the Asante wars and the resulting instability and disruption of trade, and Britain's increasing preoccupation with the suppression and elimination ...