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The University College London Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery provides maps of where plantations were built on the colonies of Grenada, Jamaica, and Barbados. [9] Slavery was also present in Guyana, though mostly under Dutch rule. [10] When Britain established Guyana as a British colony in 1815, slavery continued as it ...
[3] [4] By the mid-18th century, Britain was the world's leading commercial nation, [5] controlling a global trading empire with colonies in North America and the Caribbean. Britain had major military and political hegemony on the Indian subcontinent; particularly with the proto-industrialised Mughal Bengal, through the activities of the East ...
Though a smaller proportion of the English population migrated to British North America after 1700, the colonies attracted new immigrants from other European countries, [79] including Catholic settlers from Ireland [80] and Protestant Germans. [81] As the 18th century progressed, colonists began to settle far from the Atlantic coast.
Some have stressed the importance of natural or financial resources that Britain received from its many overseas colonies or that profits from the British slave trade between Africa and the Caribbean helped fuel industrial investment. [10]
The legal system facilitated business operations and guaranteed contracts. Cut off from Europe by the embargo and the British blockade in the War of 1812 (1807–15), entrepreneurs opened factories in the Northeastern United States that set the stage for rapid industrialization modeled on British innovations.
The era of King Cotton was underway by the early 1800s to such an extent that by the mid-19th century, southern slave plantations supplied 75% of the world's cotton. The introduction of the cotton gin was as unexpected as it was unprecedented. British textiles had expanded with no change in ginning principles in centuries.
The British economy had begun to grow rapidly at the end of the 17th century and, by the mid-18th century, small factories in Britain were producing much more than the nation could consume. Britain found a market for their goods in the British colonies of North America, increasing her exports to that region by 360% between 1740 and 1770.
British America, originally known as English America, refers to the British people's overseas territories in the Americas from 1585 to 1783. The Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland governed colonies in "English America" from 1585 until 1707, when the two merged into the Kingdom of Great Britain and the territories were renamed "British America".