The British were the first European country to understand the importance of the maritime trade and naval power. After the loss in the Hundred Years War the foreign policy of Britain switched from Europe-oriented to the colonies-oriented. To accumulate the enormous amount of resources the British needed to rely on their trade network. Thus they made diplomatic and trade agreements with whomever possible. Having in face of Ottoman empire the trade partner and the potential ally the English had the strength where the competing European countries had weakness. Instead of fighting the Turks and thus spending resources and manpower the wise Queen Elizabeth gained another market for English goods and the source of raw materials for emerging industries. The growth of the British Empire was due in large part to the ongoing competition for resources and markets which existed over a period of centuries between England and her Continental rivals, Spain, France, and Holland (Sears 23).
Englands first empire was a mercantilist one, led by both Cromwell and the Stuarts (including Elizabeth I).
They outlined ideas for the further colonization of Europe, and their mercantilist views held true until the late eighteenth century. As R.A Huttenback, author of The British Imperial Experience writes, the first British Empire came to an end after the American Revolution. However the purpose and policies of the Empire stayed the same (26-27).
They were to gain as much foreign territory as possible, thus benefiting Britain with both raw materials and potential markets (Sears 24).
The Term Paper on British Empire and India
India is located in southern Asia. India borders Pakistan, China, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Pakistan is on the northwest border. China and Nepal are on the northern border. Bangladesh is on the northeastern border. More than half of India is surrounded by the Indian Ocean. Climate, Weather, and Seasons India has one of the most diverse climates in the world. It has monsoons, to very hot weather, all ...
Britain continued to grow for another century, engaging in Imperial Wars, which dominated most of the eighteenth century.
By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, which was the last of the Imperial Wars, Britain found itself as the only empire left in Europe. This was an extraordinarily powerful position to be in, with all of Britains former rivals having long since lost their empires (Bayly 16).
After the Imperial Wars Britain found itself with many other colonies including Dutch South Africa and Australia, which offset the loss of America. This newfound position of power was also a complicated one, as Britain found it needed to protect its threatened interest in India from the southern and eastern expansion of Russia. And let us mention that Ottoman Turkey was the faithful ally of Britain in stopping the Russian expansion eastward and southward. As Britain expanded more and more, Queen Victoria, the worthy descendant of Elizabeth I, found it necessary to have a foreign policy. The protection of India from the Russians, both by land and by sea, became a major concern of Victorian foreign policy (Ross, 26).
The empire flourished under Queen Victoria, and British economy reaped the benefits. Britain had become the leading industrial nation of Europe, and more and more of the world came under the domination of British commercial, financial, and naval power (Lloyd 16-17).
However, the British power did not make the empire stable. Britain had been a mercantile empire since its creation, and by the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the old mercantilist empire had been almost entirely abandoned. Several factors led up too the weakening of the mercantilist empire, and they were: The abolition in 1807 of slavery in Britain itself, a movement led by the Evangelicals; by the freeing in 1833 of slaves held elsewhere in the Empire; the adoption, of a radical change in economic perspective (due in large part to the influence of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations), by Free Trade, which minimized the influence of the old oligarchic and monopolistic trading corporations; and by various colonial movements for greater political and commercial independence (Sears 24-25).
One key factor in the abandoning of the mercantilist empire was a book written by Adam Smith, author of The Wealth of Nations.
The Essay on The changes in britains empire from 1750 to 1900
And were they all for the better?There were many changes during 1750 to 1900, the majority of which were industrial and economic and not always for the better of then or the better of now. In this essay I will list two changes that I thought significant then I will list the negative short term effects, the negative long term effects, the positive short term effects and the positive long term ...
He openly criticized the current system of management, and claimed that Great Britain derived nothing but loss from the dominion that she assumed over her colonies. Smiths opinions obviously mattered to the Victorians as they changed much of the way the Empire was run. Even with the changes The Victorians inherited the remains of the old mercantile empire, and the recently acquired commercial network of the east (Morgan)..
