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The British Empire (red) and Mongol Empire (blue) were the largest and second-largest empires in history, respectively. The precise extent of either empire at its greatest territorial expansion is a matter of debate among scholars.
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 British Empire refers to the possessions, dominions, and dependencies under the control of the Crown.In addition to the areas formally under the sovereignty of the British monarch, various "foreign" territories were controlled as protectorates; territories transferred to British administration under the authority of the League of Nations or the United Nations; and miscellaneous other ...
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]
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 ...
An elaborate map of the British Empire in 1886, marked in pink, the traditional colour for imperial British dominions on maps. Pax Britannica (Latin for ' British Peace ', modelled after Pax Romana) refers to the relative peace between the great powers in the time period roughly bounded by the Napoleonic Wars and World War I.
The Expansion of England: Two Courses of Lectures is a book by English historian John Robert Seeley about the growth of the British Empire, first published in 1883.Seeley argued that the British expansion was based on its defeat of Louis XIV's France in the 18th century, and that the Dominions were critical to English power.
The independence of British Somaliland in 1960, along with the "Wind of Change" speech that Macmillan delivered in South Africa earlier that same year, marked the start of a decade in which the dismantling of the British Empire reached its climax, with 27 former colonies in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean becoming independent nations. [11]