British Empire

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For a comprehensive list of the territories that formed the British Empire see Evolution of the British Empire.

The British Empire in 1897, marked in pink, the traditional colour for Imperial British dominions on maps.
The British Empire in 1897, marked in pink, the traditional colour for Imperial British dominions on maps.

The British Empire was the largest empire in history and for a substantial time was the foremost global power. It was a product of the European age of discovery, which began with the maritime explorations of the 15th century, that sparked the era of the European colonial empires.

By 1921, the British Empire held sway over a population of about 458 million people, approximately one-quarter of the world's population.[1] It covered about 36.6 million km² (14.2 million square miles),[2] about a quarter of Earth's total land area. As a result, its legacy is widespread, in legal and governmental systems, economic practice, militarily, educational systems, sports (such as cricket, rugby and football), and in the global spread of the English language. At the peak of its power, it was often said that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous colonies or subject nations.[3]

During the five decades following World War II, most of the territories of the Empire became independent. Many went on to join the Commonwealth of Nations, a free association of independent states.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Growth of the British Empire
o 1.1 John Dee
o 1.2 Ireland
o 1.3 Stuart era
o 1.4 Scottish colonies
* 2 Colonisation
* 3 Free trade and "informal empire"
* 4 British East India Company
o 4.1 Expansion
o 4.2 Collapse
* 5 Breakdown of Pax Britannica
* 6 The United Kingdom and the New Imperialism
o 6.1 British colonial policy
* 7 The United Kingdom and the scramble for Africa
* 8 Home rule in white-settler colonies
* 9 The impact of the First World War
o 9.1 Cessation of the Irish Free State
* 10 Decolonisation and decline
o 10.1 The Dominions
o 10.2 India, Ceylon, Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean
* 11 Legacy
* 12 See also
* 13 Notes
* 14 References
* 15 External links

[edit] Growth of the British Empire

[edit] John Dee

John Dee, an adviser to Queen Elizabeth I on astrological and scientific matters, was the first to use the term "British Empire", at a time when "Britain" did not yet exist as a political entity (England and Scotland being separate sovereign kingdoms with a long history of enmity) and when England had few colonies of its own and was mainly involved in preying on the shipping of Spain and Portugal, the established colonial powers. From the 1550s through to the 1570s, he served as an adviser to English voyages of discovery, providing technical assistance in navigation and ideological backing in the creation of such a "British Empire", of which he saw only the earliest beginnings in his lifetime [4].

[edit] Ireland

The Normans first arrived in Ireland and established a presence by force in 1171 in order to support a Norman invasion. During the 14th century Norman rule became restricted largely to The Pale (a coastal region around Dublin). The medieval English presence in Ireland was deeply shaken by Black Death. Conflict over the English presence was exacerbated by the Protestant Reformation in England, which introduced a religious element to the 16th century Tudor re-conquest of Ireland, as almost all of the native Irish remained Catholic. It culminated in the Plantation of Ulster in 1608, following the Nine Years war (1594-1603). The Plantations of Ireland formed the templates for the empire,[5] and several people involved in these projects also had a hand in the early colonisation of North America e.g. Humphrey Gilbert, Walter Raleigh, Francis Drake and Ralph Lane. King Henry VIII claimed to have an Imperial Crown of England.

After the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and Cromwellian conquest of Ireland,[6] Irish Catholics were dispossessed of their land, and replaced with a Protestant landowning class from England and Scotland. The new Protestant ruling class was known as the Protestant Ascendancy. Catholics and, to a lesser extent, Presbyterians were discriminated against under the Penal Laws, which were re-applied with great harshness after the Williamite War. Despite assistance from France the Irish Rebellion of 1798, which involved Protestants and Catholics, was put down by British forces. The 19th century saw the Great Famine of the 1840s, during which one million Irish people died and over a million emigrated. The 19th and early 20th century also saw the rise of Irish nationalism, especially among the Catholic population.

[edit] Stuart era

In 1603, King James VI of Scotland succeeded to the English throne. The following year he negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain, and the first permanent English settlement in North America followed in 1607 at Jamestown, Virginia. King James claimed to have an Imperial Crown of Great Britain, even though Scotland and England were still separate countries with their own parliaments. During the next three centuries, England and then the United Kingdom extended its influence overseas.

The emerging single nation officially consolidated its political development at home with the 1707 Acts of Union, where the Parliament of England and the Scots Parliament were united in Westminster, London, as the Parliament of Great Britain, giving birth to the United Kingdom (of Great Britain, but not at that time, of Ireland) as a political entity.

[edit] Scottish colonies

There were several pre-union attempts to create a Scottish overseas empire, with Scottish settlements in both North and South America. Nova Scotia was to become Scotland's first unsuccessful attempt at establishing a foothold in the Americas, but it would be her last, in the form of the Darien scheme on the Isthmus of Panama, which would bring the greatest of financial disasters to the nation .

[edit] Colonisation

In 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert claimed the island of Newfoundland for Elizabeth I. This reinforced John Cabot's prior claim to the island in 1497, for Henry VII of England, as England's first overseas colony. Gilbert's shipwreck prevented ensuing settlement in Newfoundland, other than the seasonal cod fishermen who had frequented the island since 1497. However, the Jamestown colonists, led by Captain John Smith, overcame the severe privations of the winter in 1607 to found England's first permanent overseas settlement. The empire thus took shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of the eastern colonies of North America, which would later become the original United States as well as Canada's Atlantic provinces, and the colonisation of the smaller islands of the Caribbean such as Saint Kitts, Barbados and Jamaica.

The sugar-producing colonies of the Caribbean, where slavery became central to the economy, were at first England's most important and lucrative colonies.[7] The American colonies, which provided tobacco, cotton, and rice in the south and naval materiel and furs in the north, were less financially successful, but had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far larger numbers of English emigrants.[8]
The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West. The defeat of the French by Wolfe's forces foreshadowed British ascendancy in North America.
The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West. The defeat of the French by Wolfe's forces foreshadowed British ascendancy in North America.

Britain's American empire was slowly expanded by war and colonisation, with England gaining control of New Amsterdam (later New York) via negotiations following the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The growing American colonies pressed ever westward as colonists sought new agricultural lands, a search that dispersed settlers across vast landmasses in North America.

During the Seven Years' War the British defeated the French at the Plains of Abraham and captured all of New France in 1760, giving Britain control over a great part of North America - principally what is now Canada and land east of the Mississippi. The British and Colonial victory over France in Seven Years War led to a stronger sense of security on the part of the North American colonies, as many colonists no longer felt the need for British protection following the ousting of the French from North America.[9]

Later, settlement of Australia (starting with penal colonies from 1788) and New Zealand (under the crown from 1840) created a major zone of British migration. Matthew Flinders proved New Holland and New South Wales to be a single land mass by completing a circumnavigation of it in 1803. His recommendation that the continent be known as Australia was accepted.[citation needed] In 1826 New Holland was formally claimed for the United Kingdom with the establishment of a military base, soon followed by a colony in 1829. The colonies later became self-governing colonies and became profitable exporters of wool and gold. The Australian self-governing colonies with their territories subsequently federated at the beginning of the twentieth century and became the sovereign states of the emergent Commonwealth of Australia, then a Dominion of the British Empire.

(See also British colonisation of the Americas, Scottish colonisation of the Americas, Welsh colonisation of the Americas, Colonial history of America)

[edit] Free trade and "informal empire"

See also: Pax Britannica

Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown (John Trumbull, 1797). The loss of the American colonies marked the end of the "first British Empire".
Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown (John Trumbull, 1797). The loss of the American colonies marked the end of the "first British Empire".

The old British colonial system began to decline in the 18th century. During the long period of unbroken Whig dominance of domestic political life (1714–62), the Empire became less important and less well-regarded, until an ill-fated attempt (largely involving taxes, monopolies, and zoning) to reverse the resulting "salutary neglect" (or "benign neglect") provoked the American Revolutionary War (1775–83), depriving Britain of her most populous colonies, although British investment continued to play a major role in the United States economy until the First World War.[10]

The period is sometimes referred to as the end of the "first British Empire", indicating the shift of British expansion from the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries to the "second British Empire" in Asia and later also Africa from the 18th century[citation needed]. The loss of the Thirteen Colonies showed that colonies were not necessarily particularly beneficial in economic terms, since Britain could still profit from trade with the ex-colonies without having to pay for their defence and administration.[citation needed]Mercantilism, the economic doctrine of competition between nations for a finite amount of wealth which had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, now gave way in the United Kingdom and elsewhere to the laissez-faire economic liberalism of Adam Smith and successors like Richard Cobden.

The lesson of the United Kingdom's North American loss — that trade might be profitable in the absence of colonial rule — contributed to the extension in the 1840s and 1850s of self-governing colony status to white settler colonies in Canada and Australasia whose British or European inhabitants were seen as outposts of the "mother country". Ireland was treated differently because of its geographic proximity, and incorporated into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, which was a result of the Irish Rebellion of 1798 against British rule.

During this period, the United Kingdom also outlawed the slave trade (1807) and soon began enforcing this principle on other nations. By the mid-19th century the United Kingdom had largely eradicated the world slave trade. Slavery itself was abolished in the British colonies in 1834.

The end of the old colonial and slave systems was accompanied by the adoption of free trade, culminating in the repeal of the Corn Laws and Navigation Acts in the 1840s. Free trade opened the British market to unfettered competition, stimulating reciprocal action by other countries during the middle quarters of the 19th century.[citation needed]
The Battle of Waterloo marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the beginning of the Pax Britannica.
The Battle of Waterloo marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the beginning of the Pax Britannica.

Some argue[citation needed] that the rise of free trade merely reflected the United Kingdom's economic position and was unconnected with any true philosophical conviction. Despite the earlier loss of thirteen of the United Kingdom's North American colonies, the final defeat in Europe of Napoleonic France in 1815 left the United Kingdom the most important international power. While the Industrial Revolution at home gave her an unrivalled economic leadership[citation needed], the Royal Navy dominated the seas.[citation needed] The distraction of rival powers by European matters enabled the United Kingdom to pursue a phase of expansion of her economic and political influence through "informal empire" underpinned by free trade and a strategic preeminence based on naval dominance.[citation needed]

Between the Congress of Vienna of 1815 and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the United Kingdom was the world's sole industrialised power,[citation needed] with over 30% of the global industrial output in 1870. As the "workshop of the world", the United Kingdom could produce finished manufactures so efficiently and cheaply that they could undersell comparable locally produced goods in foreign markets. Given stable political conditions in particular overseas markets, the United Kingdom could prosper through free trade alone without having to resort to formal rule. In the Americas the informal British trade empire was backed by the shared interests of the United Kingdom in the tenets of the United States' Monroe Doctrine, which declared that the New World was no longer open to colonisation or political interference by Europeans. As the United States did not yet have the military strength to enforce this doctrine, the British were largely left with a free hand to enter the new markets in Latin America created after independence from Spain and Portugal, and British commercial supremacy lasted until the outbreak of World War I.[11]

[edit] British East India Company

Main article: British East India Company

The British East India Company was responsible for the annexation of most of the Indian subcontinent along with the conquest of Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya and other surrounding Asian countries. These countries became large sources of revenue for the empire and by the nineteenth century the United Kingdom had become economically dependent on India.[12]

The British East India Company originally began as a joint-stock company of traders and investors based in Leadenhall Street, in the City of London, which was granted a Royal Charter by Elizabeth I in 1600, with the intent to favour trade privileges in India. The Royal Charter effectively gave the newly created Honourable East India Company a monopoly on all trade with the East Indies. The Company transformed from a commercial trading venture to one which virtually ruled India as it acquired auxiliary governmental and military functions, along with a very large private army consisting of local Indian sepoys, who were loyal to their British commanders and were an important factor in controlling the Company's Asian conquests.[13] The British East India Company became one of the first multinational corporations, [14] but its territorial holdings were subsumed by the British crown in 1858, in the aftermath of the events variously referred to as the Sepoy Rebellion or the Indian Mutiny.

In 1615, Sir Thomas Roe was instructed by James I to visit the Mughal Emperor Jahangir (who ruled over most of the Indian subcontinent at the time, along with Afghanistan and parts of eastern Persia). The purpose of this mission was to arrange for a commercial treaty which would give the Company exclusive rights to reside and build factories in Surat and other areas. In return, the Company offered to provide to the emperor goods and rarities from the European market. This mission was highly successful[citation needed] and Jahangir sent a letter to the King through Sir Thomas. The British East India Company found itself completely dominant over the French, Dutch and Portuguese trading companies in the Indian subcontinent as a result.[citation needed] In 1634, the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan extended his hospitality to the English traders to the region of Bengal, which had the world's largest textile industry at the time. In 1717, the Mughal Emperor at the time completely waived customs duties for the trade, giving the Company a decided commercial advantage in the Indian trade. By the 1680s the Company's revenues were large enough that it was able to raise its own army, comprised mainly of indigenous Indian people who were placed under the command of British officers who were primarily English or Scottish. Such Indian soldiers were called sepoys.

[edit] Expansion
Robert Clive's victory at the Battle of Plassey established the Company as a military as well as a commercial power.
Robert Clive's victory at the Battle of Plassey established the Company as a military as well as a commercial power.

The decline of the Mughal Empire, which had separated into many smaller states controlled by local rulers who were often in conflict with one another, allowed the Company to expand its territories, which began in 1757, when the Company came into conflict with the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj Ud Daulah. Under the leadership of Robert Clive, the British defeated the Nawab on 23 June 1757 at the Battle of Plassey as a result of superior British artillery, military discipline and to a lesser extant the treachery of the Nawab's former army chief Mir Jafar[15][16] This victory, which resulted in the virtual conquest of Bengal, established the British East India Company as both a military and commercial power. However, the Company did not claim absolute authority over the territory for a long time. They preferred to rule through a puppet Nawab who could be blamed for the administrative failures caused by excessively avaricious economic exploitation of the territory by the Company. This event is widely regarded as the beginning of British rule in India.[citation needed] The wealth gained from the Bengal treasury allowed the Company to strengthen its military might significantly. This army (comprised mostly of Indian soldiers, called sepoys, and led by British officers) conquered most of India's geographic and political regions by the mid 19th century and thus the Company's territories were substantially augmented.

The Company fought many wars with local Indian rulers during its conquest of India, the most difficult being the four Anglo-Mysore Wars (between 1766 and 1799) against the South Indian Kingdom of Mysore ruled by Hyder Ali, and later his son Tipu Sultan (The Tiger of Mysore) who developed the use of rockets in warfare. Mysore was only defeated in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War by the combined forces of Britain and of Mysore's neighbours, for which Hyder Ali and especially Tipu Sultan are remembered in India as legendary rulers[citation needed]. After the Battles of Palashi (1757) and Buxar (1764) which established British dominion over East India, the Anglo-Mysore wars (1766-1799) and the Anglo-Maratha Wars (1775-1818) consolidated the British claim over South Asia, resulting in the British Empire in India, though pockets of resistance among the Sikhs, Afghans and in Burma would last well into the 1880s.

There were a number of other states which the Company could not conquer through military might, mostly in the North, where the Company's presence was ever increasing amidst the internal conflict and dubious offers of protection against one another. Coercive action, threats and diplomacy aided the Company in preventing the local rulers from putting up a united struggle against British rule.[citation needed] By the 1850s the Company ruled over most of the Indian subcontinent and as a result, the Company began to function more as a state and less as a trading concern.
"Robert Clive and his family with an Indian maid", painted by Joshua Reynolds, 1765.
"Robert Clive and his family with an Indian maid", painted by Joshua Reynolds, 1765.

The Company was also responsible[citation needed] for the opium trade with China against the Qing Emperor's will, which later led to the two Opium Wars (between 1834 and 1860). As a result of the Company's victory in the First Opium War, it established Hong Kong as a British territory. The Company also had a number of wars with other surrounding Asian countries, the most difficult probably being the three Anglo-Afghan Wars (between 1839 and 1919) against Afghanistan, which were mostly unsuccessful from a British perspective.[citation needed]

See: Company rule in India in the History of South Asia series for the history of the Company's rule in India between 1757 and 1857.

[edit] Collapse

The Company's rule effectively came to an end exactly a century after its victory at Plassey. During the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the British faced their toughest military challenge during their rule in India. It occurred when the Company's Indian sepoys rebelled against their British commanders. The rebellion began at Meerut, a town east of Delhi, when a few sepoys mutinied against their English officers and killed them. Then, the rebellion spread like wild fire over most of northern India, especially the modern states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. It immediately gained the support of almost every section of Indian society (except the westernised Indians like Raja Rammohan Roy who believed that British rule was necessary to mitigate the social evils prevalent in Indian society at that time), most notably the zamindars, peasants and Indian princes. The rebellion was a result of many factors, social, political and economical. By 1857, the inhabitants of India grew greatly dissatisfied with British rule, the character of which was perceived to be oppressive and exploitative by them. There was simmering discontent with British rule and only a spark was necessary to set it afire.[17] One such event that surely seemed trivial to the Company at the time, but that turned out to have dire consequences, was the Company's introduction of the Pattern 1853 Enfield rifle. Its gunpowder containing paper cartridges were claimed to be lubricated with animal fat and had to be bitten open before the powder was poured into the muzzle. Eating cow or pig fat was forbidden for religious reasons for the vast majority of the soldiers. Beef products were forbidden for the Hindu majority, likewise pork for the large Muslim minority.[18]

Although Company and Enfield representatives insisted that neither cow nor pig fat were being used, the rumour persisted and many sepoys refused to follow orders involving the use of the weapons using those particular cartridges. Sepoy Mangal Pandey, a Hindu saraswat brahmin of 5th Company, 34th Regiment of the Bengal Native Infantry, who would later become a symbol of Indian resistance to British rule, was hanged on the 8th of April as a punishment for having attacked and injured British superiors at the introduction of the rifle increasing tension at a time when Indians had come to resent decades of British rule under which they felt like second class citizens; exploited and seen as incapable of Home Rule.[citation needed]

In the past, Indians had feuded as much with other Indians as they did with the British, this has greatly aided the British in their conquest. There had yet to occur any sort of unified uprising against British authority. But in 1857, a number of events such as the issue concerning the Enfield cartridges led to the Mutiny of 1857, which eventually brought about the end of the British East India Company's regime in India. The British quickly suppressed the rebellion, with the majority of the Madras and Bombay armies remaining loyal and the rebellion being largely restricted to Bengal.[19] The British also had superior organisation, weapons and communications. The rebellion came to a decisive end when the British finally took control of Delhi, which was the centre of the rebellion. The fall of Delhi was followed by a large scale massacre of the inhabitants of Delhi by British forces.[20] This was not the only massacre associated with the rebellion; the massacre of British women and children at Cawnpore being the most infamous.

The Company's failure to demonstrate effective control over its conquered Indian territories caused British financial and political entities to become uneasy about the security of their interests in India and what that meant for the future of the Empire. By 1857, India was a tremendously large part of the Empire's economy. The disaster of the Mutiny in particular had a tremendous influence on the Crown's policy regarding the most effective way to govern India.[citation needed] As a result, the Crown and British government assumed direct rule over the Indian sub-continent for ninety years following the dissolution of the Company.

The period of direct rule in India is referred to as the The Raj during which the nations now known as India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar were collectively known as British India.

See British Raj in the History of South Asia series for the history of British rule in India between 1857 and 1947.

[edit] Breakdown of Pax Britannica

Britain's overseas commercial dominance had been able to draw on most of the accessible world for raw materials and markets. This dominance was won through successive victories over the Spanish, Dutch, and French between the 16th and 19th centuries. Utilising its naval supremacy, Britain mastered control of the world's raw materials and markets. Under its mercantilistic and protectionist policies, this ensured a near permanent stranglehold and global industrialisation. However, under similar programmes practised by its progeny in the now independent United States, that dominance was slowly being challenged. Additionally Britain abandoned its protectionist policies in favour of free trade simultaneously as other Continental powers implemented their own protectionist and government promoted industrialisation programmes. Under the influence of commercial and financial vested interests this policy of free trade continued to be practised under successive ministries despite Britain's declining global relative industrial and trade economic value. This situation gradually deteriorated during the late 19th century as other powers began to advance their protectionist programmes and sought to use the state to guarantee their markets and sources of supply. By the 1870s, British manufactures in the staple industries of the Industrial Revolution were beginning to experience real competition abroad.[citation needed]
Britannia became a symbol of Britain's imperial might
Britannia became a symbol of Britain's imperial might

Industrialisation progressed rapidly in Germany and the United States, allowing them to catch up with the British economy as world leaders. By 1870, the German textile and metal industries had surpassed those of the United Kingdom in organisation and technical efficiency and usurped British manufactures in the domestic market. By the turn of the century, the German metals and engineering industries would even be producing for the free trade market of the former "workshop of the world".[citation needed]

While invisible exports (banking, insurance and shipping services) kept the United Kingdom "out of the red," her share of world trade fell from a quarter in 1880 to a sixth in 1913.[citation needed] The United Kingdom was losing out not only in the markets of newly industrialising countries, but also against third-party competition in less-developed countries. The United Kingdom was even losing her former overwhelming dominance in trade with India, China, Latin America, and the coasts of Africa.[citation needed] However, this loss of supremacy was not so much a matter of the United Kingdom falling behind as it was a matter of other regions catching up in industrialisation.

As a result, the United Kingdom's commercial difficulties deepened with the onset of the "Long Depression" of 1873–96.[citation needed] This was a prolonged period of price deflation punctuated by severe business downturns. After nearly twenty years of self-evident failure of its free-trade policies, the combined results finally pressured the commercial and financial interests out of government dominance and returned a more protectionist oriented policy crowd. This retrenchment of the United Kingdom's trade system caused the other European Continental Powers to quickly move on their objective of abandoning the vestigial remnants of the early 19th century British Free-Trade system particularly by Germany in 1879 and in France in 1881 when they ended their former trade agreements with the British Empire.

The resulting limitation of the British Empire's domestic markets to European governments led the French government to attempt engineering a recreation of its earlier Empire in Africa. Soon Germany and finally the United Kingdom pushed forward in demarching respective colonial spheres in Africa, all with the goal of establishing newer sheltered overseas markets united to the home country behind imperial tariff barriers under which new overseas subjects would provide export markets free of foreign competition, while supplying cheap raw materials. Although she continued at times to attempt to adhere to free trade until 1932, the United Kingdom mitigated its risk by joining the renewed scramble for formal empire rather than allow areas under her influence to be seized by rivals.

[edit] The United Kingdom and the New Imperialism

Main article: New Imperialism

Queen Victoria and Benjamin Disraeli.
Queen Victoria and Benjamin Disraeli.

The policy and ideology of European colonial expansion between the 1870s and the outbreak of World War I in 1914 are often characterised as the "New Imperialism".[citation needed] The period is distinguished by an unprecedented pursuit of what has been termed "empire for empire's sake", aggressive competition for overseas territorial acquisitions and the emergence in colonising countries of doctrines of racial superiority which denied the fitness of subjugated peoples for self-government.[citation needed]

During this period, Europe's powers added nearly 8,880,000 square miles (23,000,000 km²) to their overseas colonial possessions[citation needed]. As it was mostly unoccupied by the Western powers as late as the 1880s, Africa became the primary target of the "new" imperialist expansion, although conquest took place also in other areas — notably south-east Asia and the East Asian seaboard, where Japan joined the European powers' scramble for territory.

The United Kingdom's entry into the new imperial age is often dated to 1875, when the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Ismail's 44% shareholding in the Suez Canal for £4 million to secure control of this strategic waterway, a channel for shipping between the United Kingdom and India since its opening six years earlier under Emperor Napoleon III. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882.

Fear of Russia's centuries-old southward expansion was a further factor in British policy[citation needed]: in 1878 the United Kingdom took control of Cyprus as a base for action against a Russian attack on the Ottoman Empire, after having taken part in the Crimean War 1854–56 and invading Afghanistan to forestall an increase in Russian influence there. The United Kingdom waged three bloody and unsuccessful wars in Afghanistan, as ferocious popular rebellions, invocations of jihad and inscrutable terrain frustrated British objectives.[citation needed] The First Anglo-Afghan War led to one of the most disastrous defeats of the Victorian military when an entire British army was wiped out by Russian-supplied Afghan Pashtun tribesmen during the 1842 retreat from Kabul. The Second Anglo-Afghan War led to the British débâcle at the Battle of Maiwand in 1880, the siege of Kabul and British withdrawal into India. The Third Anglo-Afghan War of 1919 stoked a tribal uprising against the exhausted British military on the heels of World War I and expelled the British permanently from the new Afghan state. The "Great Game" in Inner Asia ended with a bloody British expedition against Tibet in 1903–04.

At the same time, some powerful industrial lobbies and government leaders in the United Kingdom, later exemplified by Joseph Chamberlain, came to view formal empire as necessary to arrest the United Kingdom's relative decline in world markets. During the 1890s the United Kingdom adopted the new policy wholeheartedly, quickly emerging as the front-runner in the scramble for tropical African territories.[citation needed]

The United Kingdom's adoption of the New Imperialism may be seen as a quest for captive markets or fields for investment of surplus capital, or as a primarily strategic or pre-emptive attempt to protect existing trade links and to prevent the absorption of overseas markets into the increasingly closed imperial trading blocs of rival powers.[citation needed] The failure in the 1900s of Chamberlain's Tariff Reform campaign for Imperial protection illustrates the strength of free trade feeling even in the face of loss of international market share. Historians have argued that the United Kingdom's adoption of the "New imperialism" was an effect of her relative decline in the world, rather than of strength.[citation needed]

[edit] British colonial policy

British colonial policy was always driven to a large extent by the United Kingdom's trading interests, perhaps most noticeably that of the East India Company.[citation needed]. While settler economies developed the infrastructure to support balanced development, some tropical African territories found themselves developed only as raw-material suppliers. British policies based on comparative advantage left many developing economies dangerously reliant on a single cash crop, which others exported to the United Kingdom or to overseas British settlements.[citation needed] A reliance upon the manipulation of conflict between ethnic, religious and racial identities, in order to keep subject populations from uniting against the occupying power — the classic "divide and rule" strategy — left a legacy of partition and/or inter-communal difficulties in areas as diverse as Ireland, India, Malaya (Malaysia), Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Cyprus, The Sudan, and Uganda.[citation needed]

The debate about the start of the Industrial Revolution also concerns the massive lead that Great Britain had over other countries. 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. It has been pointed out, however, that slave trade and the West Indian plantations provided less than 5% of the British national income during the years of the Industrial Revolution.[21]

[edit] The United Kingdom and the scramble for Africa

Main article: Scramble for Africa

Cecil Rhodes- "the Colossus of Rhodes" spanning "Cape to Cairo".
Cecil Rhodes- "the Colossus of Rhodes" spanning "Cape to Cairo".

In 1875 the two most important European holdings in Africa were French controlled Algeria and the United Kingdom's Cape Colony. By 1914 only Ethiopia and the republic of Liberia remained outside formal European control. The transition from an "informal empire" of control through economic dominance to direct control took the form of a "scramble" for territory by the nations of Europe. The United Kingdom tried not to play a part in this early scramble, being more of a trading empire rather than a colonial empire; however, it soon became clear it had to gain its own African empire to maintain the balance of power.[citation needed]

As French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region threatened to undermine orderly penetration of tropical Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 sought to regulate the competition between the powers by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims, a formulation which necessitated routine recourse to armed force against indigenous states and peoples.[citation needed]

The United Kingdom's 1882 military occupation of Egypt (itself triggered by concern over the Suez Canal) contributed to a preoccupation over securing control of the Nile valley, leading to the conquest of the neighbouring Sudan in 1896–98 and confrontation with a French military expedition at Fashoda (September 1898).

In 1899 the United Kingdom completed its takeover of what is today South Africa. This had begun with the annexation of the Cape in 1795 and continued with the conquest of the Boer Republics in the late 19th century, following the Second Boer War. Cecil Rhodes was the pioneer of British expansion north into Africa with his privately owned British South Africa Company. Rhodes expanded into the land north of South Africa and established Rhodesia. Rhodes' dream of a railway connecting Cape Town to Alexandria passing through a British Africa covering the continent is what led to his company's pressure on the government for further expansion into Africa.

British gains in southern and East Africa prompted Rhodes and Alfred Milner, the United Kingdom's High Commissioner in South Africa, to urge a "Cape-to-Cairo" empire linking by rail the strategically important Canal to the mineral-rich South, though German occupation of Tanganyika prevented its realisation until the end of World War I. In 1903, the All Red Line telegraph system communicated with the major parts of the Empire.

Paradoxically, the United Kingdom, the staunch advocate of free trade, emerged in 1914 with not only the largest overseas empire thanks to its long-standing presence in India, but also the greatest gains in the "scramble for Africa", reflecting its advantageous position at its inception. Between 1885 and 1914 the United Kingdom took nearly 30% of Africa's population under its control, compared to 15% for France, 9% for Germany, 7% for Belgium and 1% for Italy: Nigeria alone contributed fifteen million subjects, more than in the whole of French West Africa or the entire German colonial empire.[citation needed]

[edit] Home rule in white-settler colonies

The United Kingdom's empire had already begun its transformation into the modern Commonwealth with the extension of Dominion status to the already self-governing colonies of Canada (1867), Australia (1901), New Zealand (1907), Newfoundland (1907), and the newly-created Union of South Africa (1910). Leaders of the new states joined with British statesmen in periodic Colonial (from 1907, Imperial) Conferences, the first of which was held in London in 1887.

The foreign relations of the Dominions were still conducted through the Foreign Office of the United Kingdom: Canada created a Department of External Affairs in 1909, but diplomatic relations with other governments continued to be channelled through the Governors-General, Dominion High Commissioners in London (first appointed by Canada in 1880 and by Australia in 1910) and British legations abroad. The United Kingdom's declaration of war in World War I applied to all the Dominions.

But the Dominions did enjoy a substantial freedom in their adoption of foreign policy where this did not explicitly conflict with British interests: Canada's Liberal government negotiated a bilateral free-trade Reciprocity Agreement with the United States in 1911, but went down to defeat by the Conservative opposition.

In defence, the Dominions' original treatment as part of a single imperial military and naval structure proved unsustainable as the United Kingdom faced new commitments in Europe and the challenge of an emerging German High Seas Fleet after 1900. In 1909 it was decided that the Dominions should have their own navies, reversing an 1887 agreement that the then Australasian colonies should contribute to the Royal Navy in return for the permanent stationing of a squadron in the region.

[edit] The impact of the First World War
British Empire memorial for World War I in the Brussels cathedral.
British Empire memorial for World War I in the Brussels cathedral.

The aftermath of World War I saw the last major extension of British rule, with the United Kingdom gaining control through League of Nations Mandates in Palestine and Iraq after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, as well as in the former German colonies of Tanganyika, South-West Africa (now Namibia) and New Guinea (the last two actually under South African and Australian rule respectively). The British zones of occupation in the German Rhineland after World War I and West Germany after World War II were not considered part of the Empire.

But although the United Kingdom emerged among the war's victors, and its rule expanded into new areas, the heavy costs of the war undermined its capacity to maintain the vast empire.[citation needed] The British had suffered millions of casualties and liquidated assets at an alarming rate, which led to debt accumulation, upending of capital markets and manpower deficiencies in the staffing of far-flung imperial posts in Asia and the African colonies.[citation needed] Nationalist sentiment grew in both old and new Imperial territories, fuelled by pride at Empire troops' participation in the war.[citation needed]

The 1920s saw a rapid transformation of Dominion status. Although the Dominions had had no formal voice in declaring war in 1914, each was included separately among the signatories of the 1919 peace Treaty of Versailles, which had been negotiated by a British-led united Empire delegation. In 1922 Dominion reluctance to support British military action against Turkey influenced the United Kingdom's decision to seek a compromise settlement. The League of Nations deputed former German colonies to come under the control of the United Kingdom's colonies. For example, New Zealand took over the mandate of Western Samoa, Australia that of Rabual and South Africa that of German South-West Africa.

Full Dominion independence was formalised in the 1926 Balfour Declaration and the 1931 Statute of Westminster: each Dominion was henceforth to be equal in status to the United Kingdom herself, free of British legislative interference and autonomous in international relations. The Dominions section created within the Colonial Office in 1907 was upgraded in 1925 to a separate Dominions Office and given its own Secretary of State in 1930.
Map showing British Empire in 1921 coloured pink.
Map showing British Empire in 1921 coloured pink.

Canada led the way, becoming the first Dominion to conclude an international treaty entirely independently (1923) and obtaining the appointment (1928) of a British High Commissioner in Ottawa, thereby separating the administrative and diplomatic functions of the Governor-General and ending the latter's anomalous role as the representative of the head of state and of the British Government. Canada's first permanent diplomatic mission to a foreign country opened in Washington, DC in 1927: Australia followed in 1940.

Egypt, formally independent from 1922 but bound to the United Kingdom by treaty until 1936 (and under partial occupation until 1956) similarly severed all constitutional links with the United Kingdom. Iraq, which became a British Protectorate in 1922, also gained complete independence ten years later in 1932.

[edit] Cessation of the Irish Free State
A memorial to the Irish War of Independence
A memorial to the Irish War of Independence

Irish home rule was to be provided under the Home Rule Act 1914, but the onset of World War I delayed its implementation indefinitely. At Easter 1916 an unsuccessful armed uprising was staged in Dublin by a mixed group of nationalists and socialists. From 1919 the Irish Republican Army fought a guerrilla war to secede from the United Kingdom. This Anglo-Irish War ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty. The treaty confirmed the division of Ireland into two states, most of the island (26 counties) became the Irish Free State, a dominion within the British Commonwealth, while the six counties in the north with a majority Protestant community remained a part of the United Kingdom as Northern Ireland. The Free State evolved into the Republic of Ireland, which withdrew from the Commonwealth when enacted in 1949.

Ireland's Constitution claimed Northern Ireland as a part of the Republic until 1998. The issue of whether Northern Ireland should remain in the United Kingdom or join the Republic of Ireland has divided Northern Ireland's people and was a factor in a long and bloody conflict known as the Troubles. The Belfast Agreement of 1998 brought about a ceasefire between most of the major organisations on both sides.

[edit] Decolonisation and decline
Mohammad Ali Jinnah & Mahatma Gandhi, two of the leaders of the Indian independence movement.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah & Mahatma Gandhi, two of the leaders of the Indian independence movement.

The rise of anti-colonial nationalist movements in British colonies and the changing economic situation of the world in the first half of the 20th century challenged an imperial power now increasingly preoccupied with issues nearer home.[citation needed] The Empire's end began with the onset of the Second World War, when a deal was reached between the British government and the leaders of the Indian independence movement, whereby the Indians would co-operate and remain loyal during the war, after which they would be granted independence.[citation needed] India was granted independence in August of 1947. Over the next two decades most of the former colonies would become independent.

[edit] The Dominions

The United Kingdom's efforts during World War II left the country all but exhausted and found its former allies disinclined to support the colonial status quo.[citation needed] Though the United Kingdom and its Empire emerged victorious from World War II, the economic costs of the war were far greater than those of World War I. The United Kingdom was heavily bombed and the tonnage war cost the Empire almost its entire merchant fleet[citation needed]. The United Kingdom's already weakened commercial and financial leadership were further undermined, heightening the importance of the Dominions and the United States as a source of military assistance.[citation needed]

The United Kingdom's declaration of hostilities against Germany in September 1939 did not automatically commit the Dominions. All except Australia and Ireland issued their own declarations of war. The Irish Free State had negotiated the removal of the Royal Navy from the Treaty Ports the year before, and chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war. Australia went to war under the British declaration, though Australian prime minister John Curtin's unprecedented action in 1942 of successfully demanding the recall for home service of Australian troops that had been earmarked for the defence of British-held Burma demonstrated that Dominion governments could no longer be expected to subordinate their own national interests to British strategic perspectives.

After the war, Australia and New Zealand joined with the United States in the ANZUS regional security treaty in 1951 (although the US repudiated its commitments to New Zealand following a 1985 dispute over port access for nuclear vessels). The United Kingdom's pursuit (from 1961) and attainment (in 1973) of European Community membership weakened the old commercial ties to the Dominions, ending their privileged access to the UK market.

In January of 1947, Canada became the first Dominion to create its nationals as citizens in addition to their status as British subjects (which was retained until 1977). Canada became fully independent in 1982 with the patriation of a national constitution.

[edit] India, Ceylon, Africa, Asia, the Pacific and the Caribbean

Post-war economic crisis in 1947 made many realise that the Labour government of Clement Attlee should abandon the United Kingdom's attempt to retain all of its overseas territories. The Empire was increasingly regarded as an unnecessary drain on public finances by politicians and civil servants, if not the general public.[citation needed]

The independence of India in August 1947 (and, Ceylon in February 1948) came at the end of a forty year campaign by the Indian National Congress, first for self-government and later for full sovereignty, though the land's partition into India and Pakistan entailed violence costing hundreds of thousands of lives. The acceptance by the United Kingdom, and the other Dominions, of India's adoption of republican status (1950) is now taken as the start of the modern Commonwealth. Owing to this declaration, thirty-one Commonwealth Republics are now members of the Commonwealth.

In the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, post-war decolonisation was accomplished in the face of increasingly powerful (and sometimes mutually conflicting) nationalist movements, with the United Kingdom rarely fighting to retain any territory.[citation needed] The United Kingdom's limitations were exposed to a humiliating degree by the Suez Crisis of 1956 in which the United States opposed British, French and Israeli intervention in Egypt, seeing it as a doomed adventure likely to jeopardise American interests in the Middle East.[citation needed]Singapore became independent in two stages. The British did not believe that Singapore would be large enough to defend itself against others alone. Therefore, Singapore was joined with Malaya, Sarawak and North Borneo to form Malaysia upon independence from the Empire. This short-lived union was dissolved in 1965 when Singapore was expelled by Malaysia and achieved complete independence, although the United Kingdom continued to offer protection through the Five Power Defence Arrangements.

Burma achieved independence (1948) outside the Commonwealth; Burma being the first colony to sever all ties with the British; Ceylon (1948) and Malaya (1957) within it. The United Kingdom's Palestine Mandate ended (1948) in withdrawal and open warfare between the territory's Jewish and Arab populations. In the Mediterranean, a guerrilla war waged by Greek Cypriot advocates of union with Greece ended (1960) in an independent Cyprus, although the United Kingdom did retain two military bases - Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo were given independence from the United Kingdom in 1964.

The end of the United Kingdom's Empire in Africa came with exceptional rapidity, often leaving the newly-independent states ill-equipped to deal with sovereignty: Ghana's independence (1957) after a ten-year nationalist political campaign was followed by that of Nigeria and Somaliland (1960), Sierra Leone and Tanganyika (1961), Uganda (1962), Kenya and Zanzibar (1963), The Gambia (1965), Lesotho (formerly Basutoland) (1966), Botswana (formerly Bechuanaland) (1967), and Swaziland (1968).

British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was complicated by the region's white settler populations: Kenya had already provided an example in the Mau Mau Uprising of violent conflict exacerbated by white landownership and reluctance to concede majority rule.[citation needed] White minority rule in South Africa remained a source of bitterness within the Commonwealth until the Union of South Africa left the Commonwealth in 1961.

Although the white-dominated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland ended in the independence of Malawi (formerly Nyasaland) and Zambia (the former Northern Rhodesia) in 1964, Southern Rhodesia's white minority (a self-governing colony since 1923) declared independence with their UDI rather than submit to the immediate majority rule of black Africans. The support of South Africa's apartheid government, and the Portuguese rule of Angola and Mozambique helped support the Rhodesian regime until 1979, when agreement was reached on majority rule, ending the Rhodesian Bush War and creating the new nation of Zimbabwe.

Most of the United Kingdom's Caribbean territories opted for eventual separate independence after the failure of the West Indies Federation (1958–62): Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago (1962) were followed into statehood by Barbados (1966) and the smaller islands of the eastern Caribbean (1970s and 1980s). The United Kingdom's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize on 1 June 1973, achieving full independence in 1981.
Newsweek magazine, April 19, 1982.
Newsweek magazine, April 19, 1982.

The British Western Pacific Territories such as the Gilbert Islands (which had seen the last attempt at human colonisation within the Empire - the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme) underwent a similar process of decolonisation.

As decolonisation and the Cold War were gathering momentum during the 1950s, an uninhabited rock in the Atlantic Ocean, Rockall, became the last territorial acquisition of the United Kingdom to date. Concerns that the Soviet Union might use the island to spy on a British missile test [2]PDF (396 KiB) prompted the Royal Navy to land a party and officially claim the rock in the name of the Queen in 1955. In 1972 the Island of Rockall Act formally incorporated the island into the United Kingdom.

In 1982, the United Kingdom's resolve to defend her remaining overseas territories was put to the test when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire. The United Kingdom's ultimately successful military response to retake the islands during the ensuing Falklands War prompted headlines in the US press that "the Empire strikes back", and was viewed by many to have contributed to reversing the downward trend in the UK's status as a world power.[22]

In 1984, the United Kingdom ended the protectorate status of Brunei, although the British Army maintains a presence in the Sultanate at the request of the Government of Brunei.

In 1997, the United Kingdom's last major overseas territory, Hong Kong, became a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration agreed some thirteen years previously.

[edit] Legacy

The United Kingdom retains sovereignty over fourteen[23] territories outside of the British Isles, collectively named the British overseas territories, which remain under British rule due to lack of support for independence among the local population, because of a small population size dependent on British economic subsidies making the possibility of success as a sovereign nation more difficult, or because the territory is uninhabited except for transient military or scientific personnel. British sovereignty of two of the overseas territories, Gibraltar and the Falkland Islands, is disputed by their nearest geographical neighbours, Spain and Argentina respectively.

Most former British colonies (and one former Portuguese colony) are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a non-political, voluntary association of equal members, in which the United Kingdom has no privileged status. The head of the Commonwealth is currently Queen Elizabeth II. Fifteen members of the Commonwealth continue to share their head of state with the United Kingdom, the Commonwealth Realms.

Many former British colonies share or shared certain characteristics:

* The English language as either the main or secondary language.

* A democratic parliamentary system of government modelled on the Westminster system.

* A legal system based upon English law. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, one of the United Kingdom's highest courts of appeal, still serves as the highest court of appeal for several former colonies.

* A military, police and civil service based upon British models.

* The imperial system of measurement (Only Myanmar and the United States are former British colonies not to have officially adopted the metric system).

* Educational Institutions such as boarding schools and universities modelled on the Ancient Universities.

* Driving on the left hand side of the road, with some exceptions mainly in North America and North Africa.

* Popularity of football, rugby union and/or cricket, as well as related sports.

[edit] See also
British Empire
Wikisource has several original texts related to:
British Empire
Wikimedia Commons has media related to:
British Empire
Wikisource has an original article from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica about:
British Empire

* British Emperor
* Tudor re-conquest of Ireland
* Cromwellian conquest of Ireland
* Wars involving England
* British colonisation of the Americas
* All Red Line
* British East India Company
* British Empire and Commonwealth Museum
* The British Empire in Fiction
* Commonwealth of Nations
* Commonwealth Realm
* Decolonisation
* Commonwealth Day
* Evolution of the British Empire
* History of the United Kingdom
* Protestant work ethic
* American Revolutionary War
* Economic history of Britain



* Naval history
* Napoleonic Wars
* Imperialism in Asia
* List of United Kingdom topics
* Size of Empires
* Government Houses of the British Empire
* British Personal Unions
* British India
* History of South Asia
* Triangular trade
* Atlantic Slave Trade
* Great Irish Famine
* World War I
* Industrial Revolution
* Global empire
* Western culture
* World War II
* The British Imperial Lifeline

[edit] Notes

1. ^ Angus Maddison. The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (p. 98, 242). OECD, Paris, 2001.
2. ^ Bruce R. Gordon. To Rule the Earth... (See Bibliography for sources used.)
3. ^ This phrase had already been used a few centuries before by the king Charles I of Spain, referring to the Spanish Empire.
4. ^ Ken MacMillan (2001-04). "Discourse on history, geography, and law: John Dee and the limits of the British empire, 1576–80". Canadian Journal of History.
5. ^ Nicholas Canny, Origins of Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire
6. ^ BBC The curse of Cromwell
7. ^ James, Lawrence (2001). The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. Abacus, 17.
8. ^ Niall, Ferguson (2004). Empire. Penguin, 72-73.
9. ^ "[I Wonder] whether the neighborhood of the French to our North American colonies was not the greatest security for their dependence on the mother country, which I feel will be slighted by them when their apprehension of the French is removed" Lord Bedford, 1762[1]
10. ^ £750,000,000 invested in 1914 at the outbreak of WWI T.O. Lloyd(1996). "The British Empire, 1558-1995". Oxford, p.258
11. ^ Britain and Latin America, Alan Knight, The Oxford History of the British Empire, Volume III
12. ^ James, Lawrence (2001). The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. Abacus, 219.
13. ^ James, Lawrence (2001). The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. Abacus, 222.
14. ^ The Company also had interests along the routes to India from the United Kingdom. As early as 1620, the company attempted to lay claim to the Table Mountain region in South Africa. Later it occupied and ruled St Helena, colonised Hong Kong and Singapore, and earned the dubious distinction of having its products be the target of the Boston Tea Party in Colonial America.
15. ^ Battle of Plassey
16. ^ Meer Jaffier had given no assistance to the English during the action. But, as soon as he saw that the fate of the day was decided, he drew off his division of the army, and, when the battle was over, sent his congratulations to his all. Life of Robert Clive
17. ^ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Indias-Struggle-Independence-India-Chandra/dp/0140107819
18. ^ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Indias-Struggle-Independence-India-Chandra/dp/0140107819
19. ^ The Truth about the Indian Mutiny
20. ^ http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400043107/
21. ^ Was slavery the engine of economic growth?
22. ^ Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (Abacus, 1994), p629
23. ^ http://www.fco.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1013618138295

[edit] References

* Bryant, Arthur. The History of Britain and the British Peoples, 3 vols. (London, 1984–90).
* Ferguson, Niall. Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2002),
* Hyam, Ronald. Britain's Imperial Century, 1815-1914: A Study of Empire and Expansion (Macmillan, 1993).
* James, Lawrence. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (St. Martin's Griffin, 1997).
* Judd, Denis. Empire: The British Imperial Experience, From 1765 to the Present (London, 1996).
* Lloyd; T. O. The British Empire, 1558-1995 Oxford University Press, 1996
* Louis, William. Roger (general editor), The Oxford History of the British Empire, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1998–99).
* Marshall, P. J. (ed.), The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1996).
* Olson, James S. and Robert S. Shadle; Historical Dictionary of the British Empire 1996
* Rose, J. Holland, A. P. Newton and E. A. Benians (gen. eds.), The Cambridge History of the British Empire, 9 vols. (Cambridge, 1929–61).
* Smith, Simon C. British Imperialism 1750-1970 Cambridge University Press, 1998. brief
* Chandra, Bipan India's Struggle For Independance (Penguin Books, India, 1989).
* Dalrymple, William The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 (Knopf, 2007).

[edit] External links

* Extensive information on the British Empire
* Sizes of various empires and quasi-empires
* The Commonwealth - UK government site

[show]
v • d • e
Colonial empires
Flag of Belgium Belgian
Flag of the United Kingdom British
Flag of Denmark Danish
Flag of the Netherlands Dutch
Flag of France French
Flag of German Empire German
Flag of Italy Italian
Flag of the Empire of Japan Japanese
Flag of Portugal Portuguese
Flag of Russia Russian
Flag of Spain Spanish
Flag of Sweden Swedish
[show]
v • d • e
Flag of the United Kingdom British Empire and Commonwealth of Nations Flag of the Commonwealth of Nations

Legend
Current territory · Former territory
* now a Commonwealth Realm · now a member of the Commonwealth of Nations
Europe [show]

18th century
1708-1757 Minorca
since 1713 Gibraltar
1782-1802 Minorca


19th century
1800-1964 Malta
1807-1890 Heligoland
1809-1864 Ionian Islands
1878-1960 Cyprus


20th century
since 1960 Akrotiri and Dhekelia
North America [show]

16th century
1583-1907 Newfoundland

17th century
1607-1776 Thirteen Colonies
since 1619 Bermuda
1670-1870 Rupert's Land

18th century
Canada (British Imperial)
1763-1791 Quebec
1791-1841 Lower Canada
1791-1841 Upper Canada


19th century
Canada (British Imperial)
1841-1867 Province of Canada
1849-1866 Vancouver Island
1858-1871 British Columbia
1859-1870 North-Western Territory
1862-1863 Stikine Territory
*Canada (post-Confederation)
1867-1931 Dominion of Canada1


20th century
*Canada (post-Confederation)
1907-1934 Dominion of Newfoundland2

1 In 1931, Canada and other British dominions obtained self-government through the Statute of Westminster. 'Dominion' remains Canada's legal title; see Canada's name.
2 Remained a de jure dominion until 1949 (when it became a Canadian province); from 1934 to 1949, Newfoundland was governed by the Commission of Government.
Latin America and the Caribbean [show]

17th century
1605-1979 *Saint Lucia
1623-1883 Saint Kitts (*Saint Kitts & Nevis)
1624-1966 *Barbados
1625-1650 Saint Croix
1627-1979 *St. Vincent and the Grenadines
1628-1883 Nevis (*Saint Kitts & Nevis)
1629-1641 St. Andrew and Providence Islands3
since 1632 Montserrat
1632-1860 Antigua(*Antigua & Barbuda)
1643-1860 Bay Islands
since 1650 Anguilla
1651-1667 Willoughbyland (Suriname)
1655-1850 Mosquito Coast (protectorate)
1655-1962 *Jamaica
since 1666 British Virgin Islands
since 1670 Cayman Islands
1670-1973 *Bahamas
1670-1688 St. Andrew and Providence Islands3
1671-1816 Leeward Islands

18th century
1762-1974 *Grenada
1763-1978 Dominica
since 1799 Turks and Caicos Islands


19th century
1831-1966 British Guiana (Guyana)
1833-1960 Windward Islands
1833-1960 Leeward Islands
1860-1981 *Antigua and Barbuda
1871-1964 British Honduras (*Belize)
1882-1983 *St. Kitts and Nevis
1889-1962 Trinidad and Tobago


20th century
1958-1962 West Indies Federation

3 Now the San Andrés y Providencia Department of Colombia.
Africa [show]

18th century
1792-1961 Sierra Leone
1795-1803 Cape Colony


19th century
1806-1910 Cape Colony
1816-1965 Gambia
1856-1910 Natal
1868-1966 Basutoland (Lesotho)
1874-1957 Gold Coast (Ghana)
1882-1922 Egypt
1884-1966 Bechuanaland (Botswana)
1884-1960 British Somaliland
1887-1897 Zululand
1888-1894 Matabeleland
1890-1980 Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe)
1890-1962 Uganda
1890-1963 Zanzibar (Tanzania)
1891-1964 Nyasaland (Malawi)
1891-1907 British Central Africa
1893-1968 Swaziland
1895-1920 British East Africa
1899-1956 Anglo-Egyptian Sudan


20th century
1900-1914 Northern Nigeria
1900-1914 Southern Nigeria
1900-1910 Orange River Colony
1906-1954 Nigeria Colony
1910-1931 South Africa
1911-1964 Northern Rhodesia (Zambia)
1914-1954 Nigeria Protectorate
1915-1931 South West Africa (Namibia)
1919-1960 Cameroons (Cameroon) 4
1920-1963 Kenya
1922-1961 Tanganyika (Tanzania) 4
1954-1960 Nigeria
since 1965 British Indian Ocean Territory

4 League of Nations mandate.
Asia [show]

18th century
1757-1947 Bengal (West Bengal (India) and Bangladesh)
1762-1764 Philippines
1795-1948 Ceylon (Sri Lanka)
1796-1965 Maldives


19th century
1819-1826 Singapore
1826-1946 Straits Settlements
1839-1967 Aden (colony)
1841-1997 Hong Kong
1841-1941 Kingdom of Sarawak
1858-1947 British India (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Burma)
1882-1963 British North Borneo (Malaysia)
1885-1946 Unfederated Malay States
1891-1971 Muscat and Oman protectorate
1892-1971 Trucial States protectorate
1895-1946 Federated Malay States
1898-1930 Weihai Garrison


20th century
1918-1961 Kuwait protectorate
1920-1932 Iraq4
1921-1946 Transjordan4
1923-1948 Palestine4
1946-1948 Malayan Union
1946-1963 Sarawak (Malaysia)
1948-1957 Federation of Malaya (Malaysia)

4 League of Nations mandate.
Oceania [show]

18th century
1788-1901 New South Wales
1794-1843 Sandwich Islands (Hawaii)


19th century
1803-1901 Van Diemen's Land/Tasmania
1807-1863 Auckland Islands
1824-1980 New Hebrides (Vanuatu)
1824-1901 Queensland
1829-1901 Swan River Colony/Western Australia
1836-1901 South Australia
since 1838 Pitcairn Islands
1840-1907 *Colony of New Zealand
1850-1901 Victoria (Australia)
1874-1970 Fiji5
1877-1976 British Western Pacific Territories
1884-1949 Territory of Papua
1888-1965 Cook Islands6
1888-1984 Sultanate of Brunei
1889-1948 Union Islands (Tokelau)6
1892-1979 Gilbert and Ellice Islands7
1893-1978 British Solomon Islands8


20th century
1900-1970 Tonga (protected state)
1900-1974 Niue6
1901-1942 *Commonwealth of Australia
1907-1953 *Dominion of New Zealand
1919-1949 Territory of New Guinea
1949-1975 Territory of Papua and New Guinea9

5 Suspended member.
6 Now part of the *Realm of New Zealand.
7 Now Kiribati and *Tuvalu.
8 Now the *Solomon Islands.
9 Now *Papua New Guinea.
Antarctica and South Atlantic [show]

17th century
since 1659 St. Helena


19th century
since 1815 Ascension Island9
since 1816 Tristan da Cunha9
since 1833 Falkland Islands11


20th century
since 1908 British Antarctic Territory10
since 1908 South Georgia and
the South Sandwich Islands10, 11

9 Dependencies of St. Helena since 1922 (Ascension Island) and 1938 (Tristan da Cunha).
10 Both claimed in 1908; territories formed in 1962 (British Antarctic Territory) and 1985 (South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands).
11 Occupied by Argentina during the Falklands War of April-June 1982.

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Aaron Burr, Jr.
Aaron Burr
3rd Vice President of the United States
In office
March 4, 1801 – March 4, 1805
President Thomas Jefferson
Preceded by Thomas Jefferson
Succeeded by George Clinton
United States Senator
from New York
In office
March 4, 1791 – March 3, 1797
Preceded by Philip Schuyler
Succeeded by Philip Schuyler
Born February 6, 1756(1756-02-06)
Newark, New Jersey
Died September 14, 1836 (aged 80)
Staten Island, New York
Nationality American
Political party Democratic-Republican
Spouse Theodosia Bartow Prevost
Eliza Bowen Jemel

This article discusses Aaron Burr (1756-1836), the American politician. For his father, the second president of Princeton University, please see Aaron Burr, Sr. (1716-1757).

Aaron Burr, Jr. (6 February 1756 – 14 September 1836) was an American politician, Revolutionary War hero and adventurer. He served as the third Vice President of the United States (1801–1805). As a politician, a soldier, and a man, Burr has been both zealously defended and bitterly denounced. Despite the passage of two centuries, his legacy and Burr himself remain enigmatic.

A formative member of the Democratic-Republican Party with a political base in New York, Burr served in the New York State Assembly (1784–1785, 1798–1801), as New York State Attorney General (1789–1791), United States Senator (1791-1797), and for one term as Vice President of the United States (1801–1805) under President Thomas Jefferson. A candidate for Vice-President in 1800, Burr tied Jefferson with 73 electoral votes, making him eligible for President and sending the election into the U.S. House of Representatives. After 36 ballots, Jefferson was elected President and Burr elected Vice President. As Vice President, Burr was President of the Senate, and in such role, presided over the impeachment trial of Samuel Chase.

During an unsuccessful campaign for election to Governor of New York in 1804, Burr was relentlessly defamed in the press, often by the writings of Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804), a long-time political rival and son-in-law of Philip Schuyler, the first U.S. Senator from New York whom Burr defeated in his bid for re-election in 1791. Taking umbrage at remarks made by Hamilton at a dinner party and Hamilton's subsequent failure to account for the remarks, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel on 11 July 1804, at the Heights of Weehawken in New Jersey at which he mortally wounded Hamilton. Arguably the most famous duel in American history, the duel had immense political ramifications. Burr, who survived the duel, was indicted for murder in both New York and New Jersey (though these charges were either later dismissed or resulted in acquittal), and the harsh criticism and animosity directed towards him would bring about an end to his political career in the East though he remained a popular figure in the West and South. Further, Hamilton's untimely death would fatally weaken the fledging remnants of the Federalist Party, which, combined with the death of George Washington (1732-1799) five years earlier, was left without a strong leader.

After Burr left the Vice Presidency at the end of his term in 1805, he journeyed into what was then the American West, particularly the Ohio River Valley area and the lands acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. While historians are uncertain as to Burr's particular activities, he was accused in turns of having committed treason, of a conspiracy to steal Louisiana Purchase lands away from the United States and crown himself a King or Emperor, or of an attempt to declare an illegal war against Spanish possessions in Mexico (a process known then as filibustering). Burr was arrested in 1807 and brought to trial on charges of treason, for which he was acquitted. After several years in self-imposed exile in Europe, Burr returned to practicing law in New York City and lived a largely reclusive existence until his death.
Contents
[hide]

* 1 Biography
o 1.1 Early life
o 1.2 Military service
o 1.3 Marriage
o 1.4 Legal and early political career
o 1.5 Vice Presidency
o 1.6 Duel of the vice president
o 1.7 Conspiracy and trial
o 1.8 Later life
o 1.9 Death
* 2 Character
* 3 Legacy
* 4 References
* 5 Further reading
o 5.1 Primary sources
* 6 External links

[edit] Biography

[edit] Early life

Burr was born in Newark, New Jersey, to the Rev. Aaron Burr, Sr., who was a presbyterian minister and the second president of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University; his mother, Esther Edwards, was the daughter of Jonathan Edwards, the famous Calvinist theologian. The Edwards also had a daughter, Sally, who married a scholar named Tapping Reeve, who had a son named Aaron Burr Reeve.[1] In 1772, he received his A.B. in theology at Princeton University, but changed his career path two years later and began the study of law in the celebrated law school conducted by his brother-in-law, Tapping Reeve, at Litchfield, Connecticut. His studies were put on hold while he served during the Revolutionary War, under Gens. Benedict Arnold, George Washington, and Israel Putnam.

[edit] Military service

During the Revolutionary War, Aaron Burr took part in General Benedict Arnold's expedition into Canada in 1775, an arduous trek of over 500 miles in winter. Upon arriving before the Battle of Quebec, Burr was sent up the St. Lawrence River to make contact with General Richard Montgomery, who had taken Montreal, and escort him to Quebec.

Montgomery promoted Burr to Captain and made him an Aide-de-Camp. Although Montgomery was killed in the attack, Burr distinguished himself with brave actions against the British.

His courage made him a national hero and earned him a place on Washington's staff in Manhattan, but he quit after two weeks because he wanted to return to the field. Never hesitant to voice his opinions, Burr may have set Washington against him (however, rumors that Washington then distrusted Burr have never been substantiated). General Israel Putnam took Burr under his wing, and by his vigilance in the retreat from lower Manhattan to Harlem, Burr saved an entire brigade from capture.

Alexander Hamilton was an officer of this group. In a stark departure from common practice, Washington failed to commend Burr's actions in the next day's General Orders (the fastest way to obtain a promotion in rank). Although Burr was already a nationally-known hero, he never received a commendation. According to Burr's stepbrother Matthew Ogden, Burr was infuriated by the incident, which may have led to the eventual estrangement between him and Washington. (Source: "Burr," Lomask, '82 and Shachner, "Aaron Burr," '37).

On becoming Lieutenant Colonel in July 1777, Burr assumed the command of a regiment called the "Malcoms". During the harsh winter encampment at Valley Forge, he guarded the "Gulph," a pass commanding the approach to the camp, and necessarily the first point that would be attacked.

On June 28, 1778 at the Battle of Monmouth, his regiment was decimated by British artillery, and Burr suffered a stroke in the terrible heat from which he would never quite recover. In January 1779, Burr was assigned to the command of the lines of Westchester County, a region between the British post at Kingsbridge and that of the Americans about 15 miles to the north. In this district there was much turbulence and plundering by the lawless elements of both Whigs and Tories, and by bands of ill-disciplined soldiers from both armies. Burr established a thorough patrol system, rigorously enforced martial law, and quickly restored order.

He resigned from the Continental Army in March 1779 on account of ill health, renewing his study of law. Burr did continue to perform occasional intelligence missions for Continental generals such as Arthur St. Clair and on July 5, 1779 he rallied a group of Yale students at New Haven along with Capt. James Hillhouse and the Second Connecticut Governors Foot Guard in a skirmish with the British at the West River. The British advance was repulsed, having to enter New Haven from Hamden.

Despite this brief interlude, Burr was able to finish his studies and was admitted to the bar at Albany in 1782. He began to practice in New York City after its evacuation by the British in the following year.

[edit] Marriage

That same year, Burr married Theodosia Bartow Prevost, the widow of a British army officer who had died in the West Indies during the Revolutionary War. They had four children, of whom the only to grow to adulthood was Theodosia Burr Alston. Born in 1783, she became widely known for her education and accomplishments. She married Joseph Alston of South Carolina in 1801, and died either due to piracy or in a shipwreck off the Carolinas in the winter of 1812 or early 1813. Burr and the elder Theodosia were married for twelve years, until her death from stomach cancer.

In 1833, at age 77, Burr married again, this time to Eliza Bowen Jumel, the extremely wealthy widow of Stephen Jumel. When she realized her fortune was dwindling from her husband's land speculation, they separated after only four months.

[edit] Legal and early political career

Burr served in the New York State Assembly from 1784 to 1785, but became seriously involved in politics in 1789, when George Clinton appointed him New York State Attorney General. He was commissioner of Revolutionary War claims in 1791, and that same year he defeated a favored candidate, General Philip Schuyler — for a seat in the United States Senate, and served in the upper house until 1797.

While Burr and Jefferson served during the Washington administration, the Federal Government was resident in Philadelphia. They both roomed for a time at the boarding house of a Mrs. Payne. Her daughter Dolley, an attractive young widow, was introduced by Burr to James Madison, whom she subsequently married.

Although Hamilton and Burr had long been on good personal terms, often dining with one another, Burr's defeat of General Schuyler, Hamilton's father-in-law probably drove the first major wedge into their friendship. Nevertheless, their relationship took a decade to reach a status of enmity.

As a U.S. Senator, Burr was not a favorite in President George Washington's eyes. He sought to write an official Revolutionary history, but Washington blocked his access to the archives, possibly because the former colonel had been a noted critic of his leadership, and possibly because he regarded Burr as a schemer. Washington also passed over Burr for the ministry to France. After being appointed commanding general of American forces by President John Adams in 1798, Washington turned down Burr's application for a brigadier general's commission during the Quasi-War with France. Washington wrote, "By all that I have known and heard, Colonel Burr is a brave and able officer, but the question is whether he has not equal talents at intrigue." Hamilton, who by then despised Burr, still had Washington's ear at this time. Earlier, Burr had told Hamilton that "he despised Washington as a man of no talents and one who could not spell a sentence of common English." However, Washington's wartime strategies may have colored Burr's opinion of the General. (Sources: Schachner; Lomask.)

Bored with the inactivity of the new U.S. Senate, Burr ran for and was elected to the New York state legislature, serving from 1798 through 1801. During John Adams's term as President, national parties became clearly defined. Burr loosely associated himself with the Democratic-Republicans, though he had moderate Federalist allies, such as Sen. Jonathan Dayton of New Jersey. Burr quickly became a key player in New York politics, more powerful in time than Hamilton, largely because of the Tammany Society, later to become the infamous Tammany Hall, which Burr converted from a social club into a political machine to help Jefferson reach the Presidency. In 1796, Jefferson chose Burr as his Vice Presidential running mate, but they lost to John Adams. In 1799, Burr founded the Bank of the Manhattan Company in 1799, which in later years evolved into the Chase Manhattan Bank and later JPMorgan Chase while also helping Jefferson and Madison with a second run for the Presidency in 1800. Of the 16 states' electoral votes, only seven states were for the Jeffersonians, but Federalist New York had an electoral vote coming up before the election. Burr fielded a slate for Jefferson (Hamilton fielded the other for the Federalists) and won. This led to ultimate victory for Jefferson and drove another wedge between Hamilton and Burr. Burr became Vice President.

During the French Revolution, French diplomat Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, in need of sanctuary to escape the Terror, stayed in Burr's home in New York City but also spent much time at Hamilton's house. When Burr, after the Hamilton duel and treason trial, traveled Europe in an attempt to recoup his fortunes, Talleyrand refused him entrance into France. Talleyrand was an ardent admirer of Alexander Hamilton and had even once written: "I consider Napoleon, Fox, and Hamilton, the three greatest men of our epoch, and if I were forced to decide between the three, I would give without hesitation the first place to Hamilton. He had divined Europe."

[edit] Vice Presidency

Because of his influence in New York city and the New York legislature, Burr was asked by Jefferson and Madison to help the Jeffersonians in the election of 1800. Burr sponsored a bill through the New York Assembly, creating [?] the money needed for Jefferson's campaign. Another crucial move was Burr's success in getting his slate of New York City and nearby Electors to win over the Federalist slate, which was chosen and backed by Alexander Hamilton, who lost. This event drove a further wedge between the former friends. Burr is known as the father of modern political campaigning. He enlisted the help of members of Tammany Hall, a social club, and won the election. He was then placed on the Democratic-Republican presidential ticket in the 1800 election with Jefferson. At the time, state legislatures chose the members of the U.S. Electoral College, and New York was crucial to Jefferson. Though Jefferson did win New York, he and Burr tied for the presidency with 73 electoral votes each.

It was well understood that the party intended that Jefferson should be President and Burr Vice President, but the responsibility for the final choice belonged to the House of Representatives. The attempts of a powerful faction among the Federalists to secure the election of Burr failed, partly because of the opposition of Alexander Hamilton and partly because Burr himself did little to obtain votes in his own favor. He wrote to Jefferson underscoring his promise to be Vice President, and again during the voting stalemate in the Congress wrote again that he would give it up entirely if Jefferson so demanded. Ultimately, the election devolved to the point where it took thirty-six ballots before James A. Bayard, a Delaware Federalist, submitted a blank vote. Federalist abstentions in the Vermont and Maryland delegations led to Jefferson's election as President, and Burr’s moderate Federalist supporters conceded his defeat.

Upon confirmation of Jefferson’s election, Burr became Vice President of the United States, but despite his letters and his shunning of any political activity during the balloting (he never left Albany) he lost Jefferson's trust after that, and was effectively shut out of party matters. Some historians conjecture that the reason for this was Burr's casual regard for politics, and that he didn't act aggressively enough during the election tie. Jefferson was tight-lipped in private about Burr, so his reasons are still not entirely clear. However, Burr's even-handed fairness and his judicial manner as President of the Senate was praised even by his bitterest enemies, and he fostered some time-honored traditions in regard to that office.

At least one historian (Forrest MacDonald) has credited Burr's judicial manner in presiding over the impeachment trial of Justice Samuel Chase with helping to preserve the principle of judicial independence.

[edit] Duel of the vice president
Alexander Hamilton fights his fatal duel with Vice President Aaron Burr.
Alexander Hamilton fights his fatal duel with Vice President Aaron Burr.

Main article: Burr-Hamilton duel

When it became clear that Jefferson would drop Burr from his ticket in the 1804 election, the Vice President ran for the governorship of New York instead. Burr lost the election, and blamed his loss on a personal smear campaign believed to have been orchestrated by his own party rivals, including New York governor George Clinton. Hamilton also opposed Burr, due to his (still controversial) belief that Burr had entertained a Federalist secession movement in New York. But Hamilton exceeded himself at one political dinner, where he said that he could express a "still more despicable opinion" of Burr. After a letter regarding the incident written by Dr. Charles D. Cooper circulated in a local newspaper, Burr sought an explanation from Hamilton.

Hamilton had written so many letters, and made so many private tirades against Burr, that he claimed that he could not reliably comment on Cooper's statement. Instead Hamilton responded casually by educating Burr on the many possible meanings of despicable, enraging and embarrassing Burr. Burr then demanded that Hamilton recant or deny anything he might have said regarding Burr’s character over the past 15 years, but Hamilton, having already been disgraced by the Maria Reynolds scandal and ever mindful of his own reputation and honor, did not. Burr responded by challenging Hamilton to personal combat under the code duello, the formalized rules of dueling. Both men had been involved in duels (though most never reached the dueling field) in the past (for Hamilton 21, for Burr 1), and Hamilton's eldest son, Philip, had died in a duel in 1801.

Although still quite common, dueling had been outlawed in New York and also New Jersey, but Hamilton and Burr were not citizens of New Jersey, so on July 11, 1804, the enemies met outside of Weehawken, New Jersey, and Hamilton was mortally wounded. There has been some controversy as to the claims of Burr's and Hamilton's seconds; while one party indicates Hamilton never fired, the other claims a 3 to 4 second interval between the first shot and the second shot.[2] Hamilton's shot missed Burr, but Burr's shot was fatal. The bullet entered Hamilton's abdomen above his right hip, piercing Hamilton's liver and spine. Hamilton was evacuated to Manhattan where he lay in the house of a friend, receiving visitors until he died the following day. Burr was later charged with multiple crimes, including murder, in New York and New Jersey, but was never tried in either jurisdiction. He fled to South Carolina, where his daughter lived with her family, but soon returned to Philadelphia to complete his term as Vice President. As leader of the Senate he presided over the impeachment (trial) of Samuel Chase. It was written by one Senator that Burr had conducted the proceedings with the "impartiality of an angel and the rigor of a devil." Burr's heartfelt farewell in March 1805 moved some of his harshest critics in the Senate to tears.

[edit] Conspiracy and trial

Main article: Burr conspiracy

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After the expiration of his term as Vice President on March 4, 1805, broken in fortune and virtually an exile from New York and New Jersey, Burr went to Philadelphia. There he met Jonathan Dayton, a friend and classmate from Princeton, with whom he is alleged to have formed a conspiracy, the goal of which is still unclear for some historians. His detractors said (and some still do) that the plan may have been for Burr to make a massive new nation in the west, forged from conquered provinces of Mexico and territory west of the Appalachian Mountains. Burr was to have been the leader of this Southwestern republic. Some detractors claim that it was his dream to create a Leded, the fledgling United States could have fallen into a full-scale civil war. All these accusations were voiced by Burr's political enemies.

This was a crucial time in American expansion westward. Spain held the Mexican territories, including the Southwest and California. Mexico was agitating for rebellion, and, if war broke out, the U.S. Government was anticipating seizing some or all of the land for itself.

Burr and his friends always fiercely denied any treasonable plans to overthrow the U.S. Government by force. The Louisiana Purchase (which, according to the conspirators, was never included in their plans) at the time was up for the taking, legally, because it was not yet declared a Territory of or in the United States by Congress. Many French, Spanish, Indians and Americans who were unhappy with taxes and the government lived there. (A short time later Jefferson, who realized that if the territory turned into industrialized States his idea of an agrarian Democracy would be threatened, suggested that maybe the territory's separation wouldn't be a bad idea.) Burr had leased 40,000 acres (160 km²) of land in the Texas part of Mexico, in the "Bastrop" lands from the Spanish government. His "conspiracy," he always avowed, was that if he settled there with a large group of (armed) "farmers" and war broke out, he would have an army with which to fight and claim land for himself, thus recouping his fortunes. However, that war in Texas didn't occur until 1836, the year of Burr's death.

In 1805, General James Wilkinson, chosen by Jefferson to be the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Army at New Orleans and Governor of the Louisiana Territory, actually was a traitor. (It was revealed years later that at the time he was a spy, secretly in the pay of the Kingdom of Spain.) Wilkinson had his own reasons for aiding the so-called Burr conspiracy. As Territorial Governor, he could have seized power for himself, as he had attempted in earlier plots in Kentucky. Ignorant of the General's treason, Burr enlisted Wilkinson and others to his plan in a reconnaissance mission to the West in April 1805.

Another member of the Burr conspiracy was the Anglo-Irish aristocrat Harman Blennerhassett. After marrying his niece, Blennerhassett had been forced out of Ireland. He came to live as a quasi-feudal lord, owning an island now bearing his name in the Ohio River. Highly educated, Blennerhassett maintained a scientific laboratory and an impressive villa on the island. It was there that he met Burr and agreed to help finance the ambitions of Burr's group.

Like many Americans, including Jefferson, Burr anticipated a war with Spain, a distinct possibility had someone other than Wilkinson commanded U.S. troops on the Louisiana border. In case of a war declaration, Andrew Jackson stood ready to help Colonel Burr, who had already purchased the land shares in Texas. Burr's expedition of perhaps eighty men carried modest arms for hunting, and no war materiel ever came to light, even when Blennerhassett Island was seized by Virginia militia (the island was just off shore from modern Parkersburg, West Virginia).

After a near-incident with Spanish forces at Natchitoches, Wilkinson decided he could best serve his conflicting interests by betraying Burr's plans to President Jefferson and his Spanish paymasters. Jefferson's passivity throughout most of 1806 remains baffling to this day, but he finally issued a proclamation for Burr's arrest, declaring him a traitor even before an indictment. Burr read this in a newspaper in the Orleans Territory on January 10, 1807. Jefferson's warrant put Federal agents on his trail. He turned himself in to the Federal authorities twice. Two judges found his actions legal and released him. But Jefferson's warrant followed Burr, who then fled for Spanish Florida; he was intercepted in the vicinity of the Missouri and Alabama Territories on February 19, 1807 and confined to Fort Stoddert.

Burr was treated well at Fort Stoddert. For example, in the evening of February 20, 1807, Burr appeared at the dinner table, and was introduced to the wife of the commandant, who was the daughter of the man responsible for the legal arrest of Burr, Judge Harry Toulmin.[1] In the evening, Burr played chess with her and during his confinement at the fort, was often her competitor in that intricate game.[2]

Burr's secret correspondence with Anthony Merry and the Marquis of Casa Yrujo, the British and Spanish ministers at Washington, was eventually revealed. It had been, it would seem, to secure money and to conceal his real designs, which were probably to overthrow Spanish power in the Southwest, and perhaps to found a dynasty in what would have become former Mexican territory. This seems to have been a misdemeanor, based on the Neutrality Act passed to block filibuster expeditions like those questionable enterprises of George Rogers Clark and William Blount. But Jefferson sought the highest charges against Burr, even though his informant, Wilkinson, was notoriously corrupt. It seems that both Jefferson and Burr gravely misjudged Wilkinson's character - Jefferson had personally put him in charge of the Army at New Orleans.

In 1807, on a charge of treason, Burr was brought to trial before the United States Circuit Court at Richmond, Virginia. His defense lawyers were John Wickham and Luther Martin. Burr was arraigned four times for treason before a grand jury indicted him. This is surprising, because the only physical evidence presented to the Grand Jury was Wilkinson's so-called letter from Burr, proposing stealing land in the Louisiana Purchase. During the Jury's examination it was discovered that the letter was in Wilkinson's own handwriting - a "copy," he said, because he had "lost" the original. The Grand Jury threw the letter out, and the news made a laughingstock of the General for the rest of the proceedings. The trial, presided over by Chief Justice of the United States John Marshall, began on August 3.

Article 3, Section 3 of the United States Constitution requires that treason either be admitted in open court, or proved by an overt act witnessed by two people. Since no two witnesses came forward, Burr was acquitted on September 1, in spite of the fact that the full force of the political influence of the Jefferson administration had been thrown against him. Immediately afterward, he was tried on a more appropriate misdemeanor charge, but was again acquitted.

[edit] Later life

By this point all of Burr's hopes for a political comeback had been dashed, and he fled America and his creditors for Europe, where he tried to regain his fortunes. He lived abroad from 1808 to 1812, passing most of his time in England where he occupied a house on Craven Street in London. He became a good friend, even confidant, of the English Utilitarian philsopher, Jeremy Bentham, even residing at Bentham's home on occasion. He also spent time in Scotland, Denmark, Sweden. Germany, and France. Ever hopeful, he solicited funding for renewing his plans for Mexico, but was rebuffed. He was ordered out of England and Napoleon Bonaparte refused to receive him -- although one of his ministers held an interview concerning Burr's aims for Spanish Florida or British possessions in the Caribbean. After returning from Europe, Burr used the surname "Edwards" for a while to avoid creditors. It was his mother's maiden name.

[edit] Death

Burr suffered a debilitating stroke in 1834, which rendered him immobile. In 1836, Burr died in Port Richmond, Staten Island. He is buried in Princeton Cemetery near his father and grandfather in Princeton, New Jersey.

[edit] Character

According to his detractors, Burr could be unscrupulous, insincere, devious and amoral. In fact, towards his friends and family, he was a moral and virtuous man,including his tenure in the Senate, pleasing in his manners and generous to a fault. Although he proved irresistible to many women, few historians doubt Burr's devotion to his first wife and daughter, while they lived. He was profligate in his personal finances, and gave lip service to abolitionism even though he owned slaves. John Quincy Adams said after the former Vice President's death, "Burr's life, take it all together, was such as in any country of sound morals his friends would be desirous of burying in quiet oblivion." This was his own opinion: his father, (President) John Adams, was an admirer and frequent defender of Burr, as were many other prominent Americans of the time, despite the duel and the treason trial. Burr has been compared to other animated legal characters such as Daniel Webster, Johnny Cochrin, or Caleb Buck.

[edit] Legacy
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[edit] References
Wikisource has an original article from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica about:
Burr, Aaron

* Full text of Memoirs of Aaron Burr from Project Gutenberg: Vol. 1, Vol. 2
* This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
* Milton Lomask's two-volume biography, "Burr," 1979, Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

[edit] Further reading

* Abernethy, Thomas Perkins. "Aaron Burr in Mississippi." Journal of Southern History 1949 15(1): 9-21. Issn: 0022-4642 Fulltext: in Jstor
* Adams, Henry, History of the United States, vol. iii. New York, 1890. (For the traditional view of Burr's conspiracy.)
* Faulkner, Robert K. "John Marshall and the Burr Trial." Journal of American History 1966 53(2): 247-258. Issn: 0021-8723 Fulltext: in Jstor
* Fleming, Thomas. Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America (1999)
* Freeman, Joanne B. "Dueling as Politics: Reinterpreting the Burr-Hamilton Duel." William and Mary Quarterly 1996 53(2): 289-318. Issn: 0043-5597 Fulltext: in Jstor
* Isenberg, Nancy.Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr (2007)
* Harris, Thomas, Duel: Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton and The Future of America. 1999.
* Kennedy, Roger G. Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character (2000).
* Lomask, Milton, "Aaron Burr," 2 Vols. New York, 1979, 1983.Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.
* McCaleb, W.F., The Aaron Burr Conspiracy, New York, 1903.
* Melton, Buckner F., Jr. Aaron Burr: Conspiracy to Treason. New York: John Wiley, 2002. 278 pp. online edition
* Parmet, Herbert S. and Marie B. Hecht; Aaron Burr; Portrait of an Ambitious Man (1967) online edition
* Parton, James, The Life and Times of Aaron Burr, Boston and New York, 1898. (2 vols.)
* Rogow, Arnold A. A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr (1998)
* Rorabaugh, William J. "The Political Duel in the Early Republic: Burr v. Hamilton." Journal of the Early Republic 1995 15(1): 1-23. Issn: 0275-1275 Fulltext: in Jstor
* Schachner, Nathan, Aaron Burr, A Biography, New York, 1937. online edition
* Vidal, Gore, "Burr". New York. (For a fictionalized view of Burr's life during and after the American Revolution)
* Wheelan, Joseph. Jefferson's Vendetta: The Pursuit of Aaron Burr and the Judiciary., 2005. 344 pp.

[edit] Primary sources

* Burr, Aaron. Political Correspondence and Public Papers of Aaron Burr. Mary-Jo Kline, ed. 2 vol. Princeton U. Press, 1983. 1311 pp.

[edit] External links
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:
Aaron Burr

* Did Aaron Burr Really Try to Take Over Half of America?
* The Political Graveyard: Edwards family
* Photographic tour of Aaron Burr's grave at Princeton Cemetery.
* Find-A-Grave profile for Aaron Burr

* Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress

Preceded by
Richard Varick Attorney General of New York
September 29, 1789 - November 8, 1791 Succeeded by
Morgan Lewis
Preceded by
Philip Schuyler United States Senator (Class 1) from New York
1791 - 1797
Served alongside: Rufus King, John Laurance Succeeded by
Philip Schuyler
Preceded by
George Clinton(a) Democratic-Republican Vice Presidential candidate
1796 (lost)(a),
1800 (won Vice Presidency)(a) Succeeded by
George Clinton
Preceded by
Thomas Jefferson Vice President of the United States
March 4, 1801 - March 4, 1805
(a) Clinton was a presidential candidate in 1792 and Burr was a presidential candidate in both 1796 and 1800. Prior to the passage of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804, each presidential elector would cast two ballots; the highest vote-getter would become President and the runner-up would become Vice President. Thus, in 1792, with George Washington as the prohibitive favorite to be elected President, the Democratic-Republican Party fielded George Clinton with the intention that he be elected Vice President. Similarly, in both 1796 and 1800, the Democratic-Republican Party fielded two candidates, Burr and Thomas Jefferson, with the intention that Jefferson be elected President and Burr be elected Vice President.
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Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Burr"

Categories: Articles needing additional references from January 2007 | NPOV disputes | Articles with unsourced statements since February 2007 | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles to be expanded since July 2007 | All articles to be expanded | Vice Presidents of the United States | United States Senators from New York | New York State Attorneys General | Members of the New York Assembly | Leaders of Tammany Hall | American revolutionaries | Continental Army colonels | American abolitionists | Princeton University alumni | Adventurers | Duellists | People from Newark, New Jersey | American Presbyterians | Litchfield Law School alumni | 1756 births | 1836 deaths
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