Empire and slavery
England, and from 1707 Britain, builds the largest empire in history on trade, conquest and the Atlantic slave trade, then abolishes slavery and, after 1945, gives up almost all of its colonies.
- Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain — John Darwin, Allen Lane (2012)
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
- Legacies of British Slavery database — Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, UCL, University College London
- Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World — Niall Ferguson, Allen Lane (2003)
- Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves — Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin (2005)
From the seventeenth century England, and from 1707 the new Britain, built an empire that at its peak in the 1920s covered about a quarter of the world’s land. For much of the eighteenth century Britain was also the world’s leading slave-trading nation, before it abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery in most of its colonies in 1833.
- Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain — John Darwin, Allen Lane (2012)
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
Trade, conquest and slavery
The empire began with trade and plantations. The East India Company, chartered in 1600, became a power in India after 1757. In the Caribbean, sugar islands such as Barbados and Jamaica made planters and merchants enormously rich on the labour of enslaved Africans. British ships transported an estimated 3.1 million Africans across the Atlantic, many hundreds of thousands of whom died on the voyage. Bristol, Liverpool and London grew wealthy on the trade.
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
- Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain — John Darwin, Allen Lane (2012)
Abolition
A mass campaign of Quakers, evangelicals, former slaves such as Olaudah Equiano, and hundreds of thousands of petition signers, combined with resistance and revolts by the enslaved themselves, led Parliament to abolish the trade in 1807. The Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 freed enslaved people in most colonies, but paid £20 million in compensation to slave-owners, not the enslaved. University College London’s Legacies of British Slavery project has traced how that money flowed into country houses, banks, railways and families across England.
- Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves — Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin (2005)
- Legacies of British Slavery database — Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery, UCL, University College London
Empire at its height
In the nineteenth century the empire expanded across India, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. To many Victorians it was proof of national greatness and a Christian mission; to the people it ruled it often meant conquest, land seizure and famine, alongside schools, railways and new elites. The settler colonies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand were largely peopled from Britain and Ireland.
- Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain — John Darwin, Allen Lane (2012)
- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India — Shashi Tharoor, Hurst (2017)
The end of empire
After 1945 the empire unravelled quickly. India and Pakistan became independent in 1947, amid the violence of partition; the humiliation of Suez in 1956 showed Britain could no longer act as a great power alone; most African and Caribbean colonies became independent in the 1950s and 1960s, some after brutal colonial wars, as in Kenya. The handover of Hong Kong in 1997 is often seen as the end. Dean Acheson’s 1962 remark that Britain “has lost an empire and has not yet found a role” stung because it rang true.
- Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain — John Darwin, Allen Lane (2012)
- Suez: Britain's End of Empire in the Middle East — Keith Kyle, I. B. Tauris (2003)
Today England is living with the consequences: a multi-ethnic society built partly by migration from the former empire, a Commonwealth of independent nations, and a long-running and often heated argument about how to remember it all, from the toppling of the slave trader Edward Colston’s statue in Bristol in 2020 to debates over what is taught in schools.
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
- The English and Their History — Robert Tombs, Allen Lane (2014)
Writers such as Niall Ferguson argue that, for all its crimes, the empire spread trade, the rule of law, railways, the English language and parliamentary government, and that Britain led the campaign to end the slave trade worldwide.
- Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World — Niall Ferguson, Allen Lane (2003)
Historians such as David Olusoga and Shashi Tharoor argue that the empire was built on exploitation, slavery, famine and violence, that its wealth helped make Britain rich, and that Britain has never properly faced this history.
- Black and British: A Forgotten History — David Olusoga, Macmillan (2016)
- Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India — Shashi Tharoor, Hurst (2017)
Many historians, such as John Darwin, see the empire as too vast and varied for a simple verdict: a patchwork of trading posts, settler colonies and conquered states, ruled in very different ways and experienced very differently.
- Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain — John Darwin, Allen Lane (2012)
Why it matters today
Empire is one of the most argued-about parts of English history. Some people feel pride in it, some feel shame, and many have mixed feelings or simply don't know much. Debates over statues, museum collections, school curricula and reparations are really debates about this history, and about who the English are now, in a country shaped by people from the former colonies.