In the East, Britain’s Asian empire was established by the British East India Company. It became extremely powerful during the 17th and 18th centuries, and by the 1850s the company had grown from a commercial trading organization to one which virtually ruled India. It even had its own army and fought many wars with local Indian rulers during its conquest of the country. The British Crown took control of the company in 1858. It can be argued that the colonies benefited from British occupation in several ways: the form of government, the legal system, the English language – even sports such as football, rugby, and cricket. The slave trade, which had transported millions of Africans across the Atlantic over previous centuries, was made illegal in Britain in 1807 and abolished throughout the Empire in 1834.

However, the colonies also suffered under British rule: many developed only as raw materials suppliers of crops such as sugar and cotton, to satisfy Britain’s trading interests. This meant they were dangerously reliant on harvests and economic conditions. The British also committed terrible atrocities in some countries. Despite its continuing physical expansion in the 19th century, above all in Africa, the Empire had actually begun to decline in the previous century, especially after the American War of Independence. Canada and Australia became self-governing colonies in the 1840s and 1850s, India finally became independent in 1947, and after that nearly all of Britain’s other colonies followed over the next two decades.