Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial century" by some historians,[63][64] around 10,000,000 square miles (25,899,881 km2) of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire.[65] Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in central Asia.[66] Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the Pax Britannica,[67] and a foreign policy of "splendid isolation".[68] Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many nominally independent countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been characterised by some historians as "informal empire".[69][70]
British imperial strength was underpinned by the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the Empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, the so-called All Red Line.[71]
East India Company in Asia
British policy in Asia during the 19th century was chiefly concerned with protecting and expanding India, viewed as its most important colony and the key to the rest of Asia.[72] The East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia. The Company's army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to cooperate in arenas outside India: the eviction of Napoleon from Egypt (1799), the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824) and the defeat of Burma (1826).[66]
From its base in India, the Company had also been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by the Qing dynasty in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China. In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War, and the seizure by Britain of the island of Hong Kong, at that time a minor settlement.[73]
The end of the Company was precipitated by a mutiny of sepoys against their British commanders, due in part to the tensions caused by British attempts to Westernise India.[74] The Indian Rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides. Afterwards the British government assumed direct control over India, ushering in the period known as the British Raj, where an appointed governor-general administered India and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India. The East India Company was dissolved the following year, in 1858.[75]
India suffered a series of serious crop failures in the late-19th century, leading to widespread famines in which at least 10 million people died. The East India Company had failed to implement any coordinated policy to deal with the famines during its period of rule. This changed during the Raj, in which commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect.[76]
Rivalry with Russia
During the 19th century, Britain and Russia vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the declining Ottoman, Persian and Qing Chinese empires.[72] This rivalry in Eurasia came to be known as the "Great Game".[72] As far as Britain was concerned, the defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkey in the Russo-Persian War (1826-1828) and Russo-Turkish War (1828–1829) demonstrated its imperial ambitions and capabilities, and stoked fears in Britain of an overland invasion of India.[77] In 1839, Britain moved to pre-empt this by invading Afghanistan, but the First Anglo-Afghan War was a disaster for Britain.[78] When Russia invaded the Turkish Balkans in 1853, fears of Russian dominance in the Mediterranean and Middle East led Britain and France to invade the Crimean Peninsula in order to destroy Russian naval capabilities.[78] The ensuing Crimean War (1854–56), which involved new techniques of modern warfare,[79] and was the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial power during the Pax Britannica, was a resounding defeat for Russia.[78] The situation remained unresolved in Central Asia for two more decades, with Britain annexing Baluchistan in 1876 and Russia Kirghizia, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. For a while it appeared that another war would be inevitable, but the two countries reached an agreement on their respective spheres of influence in the region in 1878, and on all outstanding matters in 1907 with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente.[72] The destruction of the Russian Navy at the Battle of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 also limited its threat to the British.[80]
Cape to Cairo
The Dutch East India Company had founded the Cape Colony on the southern tip of Africa in 1652 as a way station for its ships travelling to and from its colonies in the East Indies. Britain formally acquired the colony, and its large Afrikaner (or Boer) population in 1806, having occupied it in 1795 in order to prevent it falling into French hands, following the invasion of the Netherlands by France.[81] British immigration began to rise after 1820, and pushed thousands of Boers, resentful of British rule, northwards to found their own—mostly short-lived—independent republics, during the Great Trek of the late 1830s and early 1840s. In the process the Voortrekkers clashed repeatedly with the British, who had their own agenda with regard to colonial expansion in South Africa and with several African polities, including those of the Sotho and the Zulu nations. Eventually the Boers established two republics which had a longer lifespan: the South African Republic or Transvaal Republic (1852–77; 1881–1902) and the Orange Free State (1854–1902). In 1902 Britain completed its military occupation of the Transvaal and Free State by concluding a treaty with the two Boer Republics following the Second Boer War 1899–1902.
In 1869 the Suez Canal was opened under Napoleon III, linking the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. The Canal was at first opposed by the British,[82] but once open its strategic value was recognised quickly. In 1875, the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Ismail Pasha's 44 percent shareholding in the Suez Canal for £4 million. Although this did not grant outright control of the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882.[83] The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position,[84] but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople. This came into force in 1904 and made the Canal neutral territory, but de facto control was exercised by the British whose forces occupied the area until 1954.
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 European powers in what was called the "Scramble for Africa" by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims.[85] The scramble continued into the 1890s, and caused Britain to reconsider its decision in 1885 to withdraw from Sudan. A joint force of British and Egyptian troops defeated the Madhist Army in 1896, and rebuffed a French attempted invasion at Fashoda in 1898. Sudan was made an Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, a joint protectorate in name, but a British colony in reality.[85]
British gains in southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion in Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo" railway linking the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich South.[86] In 1888 Rhodes with his privately owned British South Africa Company occupied and annexed territories named after him, Rhodesia.
Changing status of the white colonies
The path to independence for the white colonies of the British Empire began with the 1839 Durham Report, which proposed unification and self-government for the two Canadian provinces, as a solution to political unrest there. This began with the passing of the Act of Union in 1840, which created the Province of Canada. Responsible government was first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other British North American colonies. In 1867, Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formed into the Dominion of Canada, a confederation enjoying full self government with the exception of international relations.[87]
Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901.[88] The term "dominion status" was officially introduced at the Colonial Conference of 1907, to refer to Canada, Newfoundland, Australia and New Zealand. In 1910, the Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal and Orange Free State were joined together to form the Union of South Africa, which also attained dominion status.[88]
The last decades of the 19th century saw concerted political campaigns for Irish home rule. Ireland had been absorbed into the United Kingdom with the Act of Union 1800 after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and had suffered a severe famine between 1845 and 1852. Home rule was supported by the British Prime Minister, William Gladstone, who hoped that Ireland might follow in Canada's footsteps as a Dominion within the Empire, but his 1886 Home Rule bill was defeated in Parliament, as many MPs feared that a partially independent Ireland might pose a security threat to Great Britain or be the beginnings of the breakup of the Empire. A second Home Rule bill was also defeated for similar reasons.[89] A third bill was passed by Parliament in 1914, but not implemented due to the outbreak of the First World War leading to the 1916 Easter Rising.
World wars (1914–1945)
By the turn of the 20th century, fears had begun to grow in Britain that it would no longer be able to defend the metropole and the entirety of the Empire while at the same time maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation".[90] Germany was rising rapidly as a military and industrial power and was now seen as the most likely opponent in any future war. Recognising that it was overstretched in the Pacific[91] and threatened at home by the German navy, Britain formed an alliance with Japan in 1902, and its old enemies France and Russia in 1904 and 1907, respectively.[92]
First World War
Britain's fears of war with Germany were realised in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. The British declaration of war on Germany and its allies also committed the colonies and Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support. Over 2.5 million men served in the armies of the Dominions, as well as many thousands of volunteers from the Crown colonies.[93] Most of Germany's overseas colonies in Africa were quickly invaded and occupied, and in the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and Samoa respectively. The contributions of Australian and New Zealand troops during the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national consciousness at home, and marked a watershed in the transition of Australia and New Zealand from colonies to nations in their own right. The countries continue to commemorate this occasion on ANZAC Day. Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridge in a similar light.[94] The important contribution of the Dominions to the war effort was recognised in 1917 by the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George when he invited each of the Dominion Prime Ministers to join an Imperial War Cabinet to coordinate imperial policy.[95]
Under the terms of the concluding Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, the Empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of 1,800,000 square miles (4,662,000 km2) and 13 million new subjects.[96] The colonies of Germany and the Ottoman Empire were distributed to the Allied powers as League of Nations Mandates. Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togo, and Tanganyika. The Dominions themselves also acquired mandates of their own: South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia) was given to the Union of South Africa, Australia gained German New Guinea, and New Zealand Western Samoa. Nauru was made a combined mandate of Britain and the two Pacific Dominions.[97]
Inter-war period
The changing world order that the war had brought about, in particular the growth of the United States and Japan as naval powers, and the rise of independence movements in India and Ireland, caused a major reassessment of British imperial policy.[98] Forced to choose between alignment with the United States or Japan, Britain opted not to renew its Japanese alliance and instead signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, where Britain accepted naval parity with the United States.[99] This decision was the source of much debate in Britain during the 1930s[100] as militaristic governments took hold in Japan and Germany helped in part by the Great Depression, for it was feared that the Empire could not survive a simultaneous attack by both nations.[101] Although the issue of the Empire's security was a serious concern in Britain, at the same time the Empire was vital to the British economy: during the inter-war period, exports to the colonies and Dominions increased from 32 to 39 percent of all exports overseas, and imports increased from 24 to 37 percent.[102]
In 1919, the frustrations caused by delays to Irish home rule led members of Sinn Féin, a pro-independence party that had won a majority of the Irish seats at Westminster in the 1918 British general election, to establish an Irish assembly in Dublin, at which Irish independence was declared. The Irish Republican Army simultaneously began a guerrilla war against the British administration.[103] The Anglo-Irish War ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown.[104] Northern Ireland, consisting of six of the 32 Irish counties which had been established as a devolved region under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, immediately exercised its option under the treaty to retain its existing status within the United Kingdom.[105]
A similar struggle began in India when the Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy demand for independence.[106] Concerns over communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar Conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by the Rowlatt Acts, creating tension,[107] particularly in the Punjab, where repressive measures culminated in the Amritsar Massacre. In Britain public opinion was divided over the morality of the event, between those who saw it as having saved India from anarchy, and those who viewed it with revulsion.[107] The subsequent non-cooperation movement was called off in March 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident, and discontent continued to simmer for the next 25 years.
In 1922, Egypt, which had been declared a British protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War, was granted formal independence, though it continued to be a British client state until 1954. British troops remained stationed in Egypt until the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936,[108] under which it was agreed that the troops would withdraw but continue to occupy and defend the Suez Canal zone. In return, Egypt was assisted to join the League of Nations.[109] Iraq, a British mandate since 1919, also gained membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from Britain in 1932.[110]
The ability of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy, independent of Britain, was recognised at the 1923 Imperial Conference.[111] Britain's request for military assistance from the Dominions at the outbreak of the Chanak crisis the previous year had been turned down by Canada and South Africa, and Canada had refused to be bound by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.[112][113] After pressure from Ireland and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference issued the Balfour Declaration, declaring the Dominions to be "autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another" within a "British Commonwealth of Nations".[114] This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster.[115] The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent.[115] Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression.[116] Ireland distanced itself further from Britain with the introduction of a new constitution in 1937, making it a republic in all but name.[117]
Second World War
Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions. Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand all soon declared war on Germany, but the Irish Free State chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war.[118] After the German occupation of France in 1940, Britain and the Empire were left standing alone against Germany until the entry of the Soviet Union to the war in 1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill successfully lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military aid from the United States, but Roosevelt was not yet ready to ask Congress to commit the country to war.[119] In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met and signed the Atlantic Charter, which included the statement that "the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live" should be respected. This wording was ambiguous as to whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany, or the peoples colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by the British, Americans and nationalist movements.[120][121]
In December 1941, Japan launched in quick succession attacks on British Malaya, the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, and Hong Kong. Japan had steadily been growing as an imperial power in the Far East since its defeat of China in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895,[122] envisioning a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere under its leadership. The Japanese attacks on the British and American possessions in the Pacific had an immediate and long-lasting impact on the British Empire. Churchill's reaction to the entry of the United States into the war was that Britain was now assured of victory and the future of the Empire was safe,[123] but the manner in which the British rapidly surrendered irreversibly altered Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power.[124][125] Most damaging of all was the fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar.[126] The realisation that Britain could not defend the entire Empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States, which after the war eventually resulted in the 1951 ANZUS Pact between Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America.[120]
Decolonisation and decline (1945–1997)
Though Britain and the Empire emerged victorious from the Second World War, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, was now literally in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, to whom the balance of global power had now shifted.[127] Britain itself was left virtually bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a $3.5 billion loan from the United States,[128] the last instalment of which was repaid in 2006.[129]
At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations. The situation was complicated further by the increasing Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union, both nations opposed to the European colonialism of old, though American anti-Communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, which led the US to support the continued existence of the British Empire.[130]
The "wind of change" ultimately meant that the British Empire's days were numbered, and on the whole, Britain adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies once stable, non-Communist governments were available to transfer power to, in contrast to other European powers like France or Portugal,[131] which waged costly and ultimately unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to five million, three million of whom were in Hong Kong.[130]
Initial disengagement
The pro-decolonisation Labour government elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the Empire, that of Indian independence.[132] India's two independence movements—the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League—had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed as to how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest and the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy during 1946 led Attlee to promise independence no later than 1948, but when the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent to Britain's newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, partitioned independence was hastily brought forward to 15 August 1947.[133] The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan.[134] Millions of Muslims subsequently crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus in the reverse direction, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of the British Raj, and Ceylon gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan and Ceylon became members of the Commonwealth, though Burma chose not to join.[135]
The British Mandate of Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India.[136] The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following Nazi oppression and genocide in the Second World War. Rather than deal with the issue, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve,[137] which it did by voting for the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state.
Following the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin. The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malayan-Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted.[138] The Malayan Emergency, as it was known, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and British North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-dominated Singapore left the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations.[139] Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union[140] and maintained its status until independence in 1984.
[edit] Suez and its aftermath
In 1951, the Conservative Party was returned to power in Britain, under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power relied on the continued existence of the Empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India. However, Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would become independent by 1955.[141]
In 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of the new British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, was to collude with France to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the canal.[142] Eden infuriated his US counterpart, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion.[143] Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after Nikita Khrushchev threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency.[144] Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objective of recapturing the Suez Canal,[145] UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a very humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned.[146]
The Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage, demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States.[147][148][149] The events at Suez wounded British national pride, leading one MP to describe it as "Britain's Waterloo"[150] and another to suggest that the country had become an "American satellite".[151] Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen the British political establishment as "Suez syndrome",[152] from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.
While the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse.[153] Britain again soon deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval,[154] as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States.[150] Britain maintained a presence in the Middle East for another decade, withdrawing from Aden in 1967, and Bahrain in 1971.
Wind of change
Macmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of "the wind of change blowing through this continent."[155] Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly.[156] To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the 1950s—Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya—were added nearly ten times that number in the 1960s.[155]
Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968 (see map). British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was complicated by the region's white settler populations, particularly in Rhodesia where racial tensions had led Ian Smith, the Prime Minister, to a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the British Empire in 1965.[157] Rhodesia remained in a state of civil war between its black and white population until the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, under which Rhodesia was temporarily returned to British colonial rule until elections could be held, under British supervision. The elections were held the following year and won by Robert Mugabe, who became the Prime Minister of the newly independent state of Zimbabwe.[158]
In the Mediterranean, a guerrilla war waged by Greek Cypriots ended (1960) in an independent Cyprus, with the UK retaining the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo were amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain.[157]
Most of the UK's West Indies territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two by far largest members.[159] Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands in the 1970s and 1980s, but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence.[160] The British Virgin Islands,[161] Cayman Islands[162] and Montserrat[163] opted to retain ties with Britain. Guyana achieved independence from the UK in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.
British territories in the Pacific acquired independence between 1970 (Fiji) and 1980 (Vanuatu), the latter's independence having been delayed due to political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France.[53] Fiji, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea chose to become Commonwealth realms.
End of empire
The granting of independence to Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe) and the New Hebrides (as Vanuatu) in 1980 and Belize in 1981 meant that, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts (and the acquisition in 1955 of an uninhabited rock in the Atlantic Ocean, Rockall),[164] the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete.
In 1982, Britain's resolve to defend its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire.[165] Britain's ultimately successful military response to retake the islands during the ensuing Falklands War was viewed by many to have contributed to reversing the downward trend in the UK's status as a world power.[166]
The same year, the Canadian government severed its last legal link with Britain by patriating the Canadian constitution from Britain. The 1982 Canada Act passed by the British parliament ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution.[167] Equivalent acts were passed for Australia and New Zealand in 1986.[168]
In September 1982, the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese government on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong.[169] Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, Hong Kong Island itself had been ceded to Britain "in perpetuity", but the vast majority of the colony was constituted by the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99 year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997.[170] Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China.[171] A deal was reached in 1984—under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would become a Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China, maintaining its way of life for at least 50 years.[172] The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many,[173] including Charles, Prince of Wales[174] who was in attendance, "the end of Empire".[167][175]
Legacy
The UK retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles,[176] which were renamed the British overseas territories in 2002.[177] Some are uninhabited except for transient military or scientific personnel; the remainder are self-governing to varying degrees and are reliant on the UK for foreign relations and defence. The British government has stated its willingness to assist any Overseas Territory that wishes to proceed to independence, where that is an option.[178] British sovereignty of several of the overseas territories is disputed by their geographical neighbours: Gibraltar is claimed by Spain, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are claimed by Argentina, and the British Indian Ocean Territory is claimed by Mauritius and Seychelles.[179] The British Antarctic Territory is subject to overlapping claims by Argentina and Chile, while many nations do not recognise any territorial claims to Antarctica.
Most former British colonies are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a non-political, voluntary association of equal members, in which the UK has no privileged status. Fifteen members of the Commonwealth continue to share their head of state with the UK, as Commonwealth realms.
Decades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on the independent nations that arose from the British Empire. The English language is the primary language of over 300 million people, and the secondary language of over 400 million,[180] helped in part by the cultural influence of the United States, itself a product of the British Empire. The English parliamentary system served as the template for the governments for many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems.[181] The British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, one of the UK's highest courts of appeal, still serves as the highest court of appeal for several former colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific. British Protestant missionaries who fanned out across the globe often in advance of soldiers and civil servants spread the Anglican Communion to all continents. British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway stations and government buildings, continues to stand in many cities that were once part of the British Empire.[182] Ball games that were developed in Victorian Britain—football, cricket, rugby, lawn tennis and golf[183]—were exported, as were the British choice of system of measurement, the imperial system, and the British convention of driving on the left hand side of the road.
Political boundaries drawn by the British did not always reflect homogeneous ethnicities or religions, contributing to conflicts in Kashmir, Palestine, Sudan, Nigeria and Sri Lanka. The British Empire was also responsible for large migrations of peoples. Millions left the British Isles, with the founding settler populations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand coming mainly from Britain and Ireland. Tensions remain between the white settler populations of these countries and their indigenous minorities, and between settler minorities and indigenous majorities in South Africa and Zimbabwe. British settlement of Ireland has left its mark in the form of divided Catholic and Protestant communities in Northern Ireland. Millions of people moved to and from British colonies, with large numbers of Indians emigrating to other parts of the Empire. Chinese emigration, primarily from Southern China, led to the creation of Chinese-majority Singapore and small Chinese minorities in the Caribbean. The makeup of Britain itself was changed after the Second World War with immigration to the United Kingdom from the colonies to which it was granting independence
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