British Empire

A selection of publications that link to the British Empire. See also our two podcast series The British Empire 1600-1800 and The British Empire 1800-present.

A Commercial Revolution: the rise of a trading empire (Classic pamphlet by Ralph Davis)
The pattern of overseas trade is always in movement: new commodities are constantly appearing, different trading partners coming to the fore-front. But between the latter end of the sixteenth and the second half of the eighteenth century, change took especially far-reaching forms... 

The 1620 Mayflower voyage and the English settlement of North America (Historian article by Martyn Whittock)
Martyn Whittock explores the reasons for migration to the New World in 1620 and later, and the significance of those migrants, both at the time and their impact on the evolution of the USA today.

Eighteenth-century Britain and its Empire (Historian article by P.J. Marshall)
The concept of an ‘English' or even of a ‘British' empire has been in use at least from the sixteenth century. What the term then conveyed was of course very different from what it was to convey in modern times...

The Industrial Revolution in England (Classic pamphlet by R.M. Hartwell)
Revolutions of the magnitude of the Industrial Revolution in England provoke historical controversy...

The first trans-Atlantic hero? General James Wolfe and British North America (Historian article by Stephen Brumwell)
Early on the morning of 8 June 1758, British frigates unleashed their broadsides upon French shore defences at Gabarus Bay, on the foggy and surf-lashed island of Cape Breton... Command of the opening amphibious assault was entrusted to thirty-one-year-old Brigadier General James Wolfe...

The Slave Trade and British Abolition, 1787-1807 (Historian article by James Walvin)
In the 1780s more than 1000 British and British colonial slave ships transported more than 300,000 enslaved Africans. There was little evidence that here was a system uncertain about its economic future...

Attitudes to Liberty and Enslavement: the career of James Irving, a Liverpool slave ship surgeon and captain (Historian article by Suzanne Schwarz)
Prior to abolition in 1807, Britain was the world's leading slave trading nation. Of an estimated six million individuals forcibly transported from Africa in the transatlantic slave trade in the 18th century, almost 2.5 million (40%) were carried in British vessels...

The Pensylvanian Origins of British Abolitionism (Historian article by Brycchan Carey)
2007 marked the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in British ships. Slavery itself continued to be legal in Britain and its colonies until the 1830s...

The effect of the loss of the American Colonies upon British Policy (Classic pamphlet by W.R. Brock)
Two weeks after Yorktown, but before the news of that disaster had reached England, George III wrote to Lord North that "The dye is now cast whether this shall be a great Empire or the least dignified of European states"...

‘Savages and rattlesnakes': Washington, District of Columbia: A British diplomat's view, 1823-25 (Historian article by Joseph Smith)
Henry Unwin Addington, a nephew of the former British prime minister Henry Addington, had joined the Foreign Office at the age of 16 in 1806. After serving in various junior diplomatic posts in Europe he learnt in 1822 that he was to be promoted to secretary of legation in Washington...

The changing convict experience: forced migration to Australia (Historian article by Edward Washington)
Edward Washington explores the story of William Noah who was sentenced to death for burglary in 1797 aged 43, and his sentence then commuted to 'transportation for life'... 

Queen Victoria (Historian article by Dorothy Thompson)
A century ago Britain celebrated Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee – her reign having provided 60 years of stability at the height of Britain’s imperial power. Dorothy Thompson profiles the woman at the heart of the Empire...

The Migration of Indians to Guiana and Surinam (Historian article by Ananda Dulal Sarkar)
While migration from Europe to North America and elsewhere is well known, that from India is less familiar to Western readers...

Immigration and the making of British food (Historian article by Panikos Panayi)
Panikos Panayi explores the way in which immigration has transformed British eating habits over the last two centuries.

Pressure and Persuasion: Canadian agents and Scottish emigration, c.1870- c.1930 (Historian article by Marjory Harper)
In February, 1907, the Canadian government's most northerly regional emigration office in the British Isles opened for business in Aberdeen. This northern outpost was only one example of a nationwide network of emigration agency activity by which Canada in particular covered the British Isles with resident and itinerant propagandists for more than sixty years after Confederation...

From Disraeli to Callaghan: Britain 1879-1979 (Historian article by A.J.P. Taylor)
A previously unpublished survey of British history by A.J.P. Taylor.

The Press and the Public during the Boer War 1899-1902 (Historian article by Dr Jacqueline Beaumont Hughes)
The conflict between Great Britain and the Republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State which slipped into war in October 1899 was to become the most significant since the Crimean War...

Jawaharlal Nehru: The Last Viceroy? (1998 Cust Lecture by Judith M. Brown)
Judith Brown's portrait of Indian statesman Jawaharlal Nehru.

Winston Churchill and the Islamic World: Early encounters (1890s-1908) (Historian article by Warren Dockter)
Winston Churchill had a major impact on British and world history in the twentieth century. Yet relatively little attention has been paid to his relations with the Islamic world. This is a strange omission given that as Colonial Secretary he played a large part in the development of the Middle East and that during the Second World War the region was again one of his major concerns...

The shortest war in history: The Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896 (Historian article by Alf Wilkinson)
At 9am on 27 August 1896, following an ultimatum, five ships of the Royal Navy began a bombardment of the Royal Palace and Harem in Zanzibar. Thirty-eight, or 40, or 43 minutes later, depending on which source you believe, the bombardment stopped when the white flag of surrender was raised...

Journeys Home: Indian forces and the First World War (Historian article by Paula Kitching)
In 1914 the British Empire was one of the largest global operations in existence. Roughly a quarter of the world’s population came under either its direct control or at least its influence. Its territories spread around the globe in the northern and southern hemispheres and across continents. When Britain declared war in 1914 appeals went out across the Empire and the Dominions for support...

The Northern Limit: Britain, Canada and Greenland, 1917-20 (Historian article by Ben Markham)
Imperial ambitions during the First World War extended beyond the Middle East and Africa. In this article Ben Markham looks at the territorial wrangling over Greenland.

British Cooperation with the Zionist Agency in Palestine 1940-42 (Historian article by Nicholas Hammond).
Nicholas Hammond provides an account of a little known Strategic Operations Executive intervention in the Middle East.

Why the OBE survived the Empire (Historian article by J.M. Lee)
An anomaly of the British honours system is the name of the award most frequently given - the Order of the British Empire created in 1917. Each medal carries the words: ‘For God and the Empire'...

War Plan Red: the American Plan for war with Britain (Historian article by John Major)
John Major discusses an astonishing aspect of past Anglo-American history.

What Have Historians Been Arguing About... migration and empire (article by Lauren Working)
In previous centuries, English historians often celebrated the actions of English people (usually men) in other territories. Decolonisation and waves of migration in the twentieth century, however, brought more critical questions about the power structures and inequalities of colonial systems...

What have historians been arguing about... decolonisation and the British Empire? (article by Edward Webb)
Decolonisation is a contested term. When first used in 1952, it referred to a political event: a colony gaining independence; it has since come to describe a process...

What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the British Empire and the age of revolutions in the global South (article by Sujit Sivasundaram)
The historiography of the British Empire has taken a long course since the era of decolonisation...

What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the British Empire on Britain? (article by Liam Liburd)
This article focuses on the question of the empire’s impact on Britain itself: on how the act of conquering and maintaining an empire shaped British politics, culture and society.

The British Empire on trial (Historian article by Dr Gregory Gifford)
Dr Gregory Gifford puts the British Empire on trial, presenting a balanced case both for and against. 

Beyond the balance sheet: navigating the ‘imperial history wars’ when planning and teaching about the British Empire (Teaching History article by Alex Benger)