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The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
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 ...
In 1984 the British government signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration with China and agreed to turn over Hong Kong and its dependencies in 1997. British rule ended on 30 June 1997, with China taking over at midnight, 1 July 1997 (at end of the 99-year lease over the New Territories, along with the ceded Hong Kong Island and Kowloon).
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 ...
A Dominion was any of several largely self-governing countries of the British Empire, once known collectively as the British Commonwealth of Nations. [1] [2] Progressing from colonies, their degrees of colonial self-governance increased unevenly over the late 19th century through the 1930s. Vestiges of empire lasted in some dominions well into ...
The ensuing First World War eventually pitted the Allied and Associated Powers including the British Empire, France, Russia, Italy and the U.S. against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. The deadliest conflict in human history up to that point, the war ended in an Allied victory in November 1918 but inflicted ...
The first British Empire was largely destroyed by the loss of the American colonies, followed by a "swing to the east" and the foundation of a second British Empire based on commercial and territorial expansion in South Asia. [111] Much of the historiography concerns the reasons why the Americans rebelled in the 1770s and successfully broke away.
The Romano-British responded by appealing to the Roman commander of the Western empire, Magister militium Aetius, for help (a document known as the Groans of the Britons), even though Honorius, the Western Roman Emperor, had written to the British civitas in or about 410 telling them to look to their own defence.