The British Empire

During the reign of Queen Victoria, United Kingdom became the biggest empire in the world. In the last decades of the 19^th century, UK occupied circa the 27% of the livable territories.

The British imperial activity started in the second half of 16^th century, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, when the government encouraged the birth of ‘plantations’, the settling of British peoples in Ireland. This fact created tensions and conflicts that nowadays mined Ireland’s stability.

In the same century, West India Company created settlements in Virginia and Georgia, that later created the ‘thirteen colonies’ of the USA.

However, in the East, East India Company was ruling over India, Burma, Pakistan and Ceylon. After the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the Crown got the direct control of the Raj, creating the British-Indian Empire. Queen Victoria was crowned Empress of India by the British premier Disraeli in 1877.

UK also owned Australia, New Zealand, Papua (the southern part of Papua-New Guinea, which was controlled by German Empire), Malaysia (that granted the control of Chinese trades), Hong Kong, Singapore;

In America the Crown controlled Canada in the North, and Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad, Falklands, Southern Georgia and Bermuda in the South; in Arabia UK owned Trucial States (nowadays UAE), Oman and Northern Yemen.

In Africa, it owned a greater part of the South and after the war against Boers (who created the states of Orange and Transvaal) created the South African Union. Cecil Rhodes ‘conquest’ territories of Bechuanaland, North and South Rhodesia, the city of Walvis Bay, Nyasaland (Malawi);

On the Northern part of the Black Continent, UK controlled the British East Africa, the isles of Zanzibar (in front of German colony of Tanganyika), Somaliland, Sudan (with the British protectorate of Egypt) and, in the Gulf of Guinea, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast and Nigeria.

Finally yet importantly, above trades, UK controlled the isles of Malta and Cyprus, that controlled the trades and the Suez Canal access, and the city of Gibraltar, which controlled the access to the Mediterranean Sea.