 | British Empire: Encyclopedia II - British Empire - Background: The English and Scottish Empires
British Empire - Background: The English and Scottish Empires
British Empire - The Anglo-Norman Kingdom
In 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, (also known as William the Bastard because he was the product of an affair his father had with a tanner's daughter), conquered England and asserted his right to be king, giving England its first overseas territory (Normandy). The new rulers had dual roles. First, as kings of England they were sovereign lords. Second, as dukes of Normandy, they were vassals of the kings of France. This led to centuries of conflicts which ended with their loss of French holdings in 1558. In the meantime, the annexation of Ireland began in 1172 and Wales was conquered in 1282.
British Empire - Growth of the overseas empire
The overseas British Empire — in the sense of British oceanic exploration and settlement outside of Europe and the British Isles — was rooted in the pioneering maritime policies of King Henry VII, who reigned 1485–1509. Building on commercial links in the wool trade promoted during the reign of his predecessor King Richard III, Henry established the modern English merchant marine system, which greatly expanded English shipbuilding and seafaring. The merchant marine also supplied the basis for the mercantile institutions that would play such a crucial role in later British imperial ventures, such as the Massachusetts Bay Company and the British East India Company. Henry's financial reforms made the English Exchequer solvent, which helped to underwrite the development of the Merchant Marine. Henry also ordered construction of the first English dry dock, at Portsmouth, and made improvements to England's small navy. Additionally, Henry sponsored the voyages of the Italian mariner John Cabot in 1496 and 1497 that established England's first overseas colony - a fishing settlement - in Newfoundland, which Cabot claimed on behalf of Henry.
British Empire - Henry VIII and the rise of the Royal Navy
The foundations of sea power, having been laid during Henry VII's reign, were gradually expanded to protect English trade and open up new routes. King Henry VIII founded the modern English navy (though the plans to do so were put into motion during his father's reign), more than tripling the number of warships and constructing the first large vessels with heavy, long-range guns. He initiated the Navy's formal, centralised administrative apparatus, built new docks, and constructed the network of beacons and lighthouses that greatly facilitated coastal navigation for English and foreign merchant sailors. Henry thus established the munitions-based Royal Navy that was able to repulse the Spanish Armada in 1588, and his innovations provided the seed for the imperial navy of later centuries.
British Empire - The Elizabethan era
During the reign of the Tudor Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Drake circumnavigated the globe in the years 1577 to 1580, only the second to accomplish this feat after Ferdinand Magellan's expedition. In 1579, Drake landed somewhere in northern California and claimed for the Crown what he named Nova Albion ("New Albion", Albion being an ancient name for Britain), though the claim was not followed by settlement. Subsequent maps spell out Nova Albion to the north of all New Spain. Thereafter, England's interests outside Europe grew steadily, promoted by John Dee, who coined the phrase "British Empire". An expert in navigation, he was visited by many of the early English explorers before and after their expeditions. He was a Welshman, and his use of the term British fitted with the Welsh origins of Elizabeth's Tudor family, although his conception of empire was derived from Dante's book Monarchia.
Humphrey Gilbert followed on Cabot's original claim when he sailed to Newfoundland in 1583 and declared it an English colony on August 5 at St John's. Sir Walter Raleigh organised the first colony in Virginia in 1587 at Roanoke Island. Both Gilbert's Newfoundland settlement and the Roanoke colony were short-lived, however, and had to be abandoned due to food shortages, severe weather, shipwrecks, and hostile encounters with indigenous tribes on the American continent.
The Elizabethan era built on the past century's imperial foundations by expanding Henry VIII's navy, promoting Atlantic exploration by English sailors, and further encouraging maritime trade especially with the Netherlands and the Hanseatic League. However, the Elizabethan navy suffered severe defeats against the Spanish fleets in the Anglo-Spanish War following the Spanish Armada campaign, which weakened the Royal Navy and allowed Spain to retain effective control of Atlantic sea lanes until the 1630s, when decisive victories by the Dutch made the Netherlands the dominant seafaring nation in the Atlantic.
British Empire - The Stuart era
The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 during the Anglo-Spanish War (1585-1604) helped to strengthen England's advance toward becoming a major naval power, but this naval advantage was lost in the attack upon Spain by the disastrous Drake-Norris Expedition of 1589, and subsequent naval and land defeats at the hands of Spain in the 1590s thwarted attempts to settle North America, and helped damage the English Exchequer. However it did give English sailors and shipbuilders vital experience. Finally in 1604, King James I of England negotiated the Treaty of London which ceased hostilities with Spain, and the first permanent English settlement followed in 1607 at Jamestown, Virginia. During the next three centuries, England extended its influence overseas and consolidated its political development at home. In 1707, the parliaments of England and Scotland were united in London as the parliament of Great Britain.
British Empire - Scottish Empire
There were several pre-union attempts at creating a Scottish Overseas Empire, with various Scottish settlements in North and South America. The most famous of these was the disastrous Darién scheme which attempted to establish a settlement colony and trading post in Panama to foster trade between Scotland and the Far East.
After union many Scots, especially in Canada and Australia, took up posts as doctors, lawyers and teachers. Progressions in Scotland itself during the Scottish enlightenment led to advancements throughout the empire. Scots settled across the Empire as it developed and built up their own communities such as Dunedin in New Zealand.
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 Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Background: The English and Scottish Empires", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki |
