The Napoleonic Wars

Seminar 3 The Second British Empire

Give detailed answers to the following questions:

1. What was the main economic incentive behind the Second British Empire? What continents did the Second British Empire focus on?

2. How did Great Britain manage to establish its strong presence India? What was Great Britain’s interest in Australia? How did Great Britain try to tighten control over its territory in India and Canada?

3. Why was slave trade abolished?

4. What secured Britain’s Mediterranean position and its route to the east? What territories were seized by Great Britain during the Napoleonic Wars?

5. What conflict did the British have with the Boers?

6. Was British presence in India strong? Why did an armed uprising break out in India? When was Burma turned into Indian province?

7. Why did the concept of responsible government emerge? What colonies were granted responsible government by Britain?

8. What was the reason for the Opium Wars?

9. Why can British policy in Africa in the second half of the 19^th century be called aggressive? What changes took place in the 20^th century?

10. What fact marked the beginning of an increasing desire for independence in many of the colonies?

11. What territories were brought under British control after WW I?

12. Why did Britain have to grant independence to its former colonies? What colonies were first to become free?

13. What facts prove the increasing discontent of the colonies with the British control? What measures were taken? What triggered the decolonization?

14. In what cases did British governments not resist decolonization? In what cases it did?

The information given below can be of use when answering the questions above.

Introduction

After the loss of the American colonies, British commerce turned from the Americas ([ə'merikəz] – another name for America) to the east in its search both for spices for re-export and, increasingly, for markets to sell ever-growing amounts of British manufactured goods. The Industrial Revolution had transformed the British economy from a primarily agricultural one to one based much more on mechanized manufacturing, and as a result had drastically increased the amount of British products available for export. The quest for new markets for international trade was the economic incentive ([ɪn'sentɪv] – побуждение, стимул) behind the Second British Empire. Free trade, the belief that international trade should not be restricted by any one nation, replaced the old colonial system, which had relied on mercantilist ideas of protected commerce.

The Second British Empire, focused more on Asia and Africa, continued to expand in the 1800s and early 1900s and reached its apex (['eɪpeks] – высшая точка, вершина) at the end of World War I. However, a growing nationalism among the British colonies gradually weakened the power of the empire, and Britain was eventually forced to grant independence to many of its former colonies.

Th century

India

Although the first empire was centered in the Americas, the English were also active in India in the 17th century. The English East India Company founded trading posts (stores or small settlements established for trading, typically in a remote place known as factories) at Surat (1612) and Madras, now Chennai, (1639) under the auspices (под покровительством чего-л.; при содействии чего-л.) of the native Mughal Empire. Rapid expansion followed, and in 1690 the company set up a new factory further up the River Hugli, on a site that became Calcutta (now Kolkata). By 1700 the company was extending its commercial activities in Bengal [beŋ'gɔ:l] (a region in the northeast of the Indian subcontinent. In 1947, the province was divided into West Bengal, which has remained a state of India, and East Bengal, which is now Bangladesh [‘bæŋglə'deʃ]) and had established itself as a leading player in Indian politics.

After the death of the Mughal emperor in 1707, the Mughal Empire in India entered a period of instability. During this time the East India Company – while remaining above all a commercial organization – entered more directly into politics in order to preserve its position. Then, during the 1740s and 1750s, the East India Company fought the French East India Company for primacy in India. A series of engagements culminated in June 1757, in which the British defeated their Indian and French rivals and established the East India Company as the dominant power in the important region of Bengal.

Australia

Though English expeditions had landed in Australia in the late 1600s, original assessments of the usefulness of the continent were not enough to motivate a large-scale interest in colonization. It was the more thorough explorations of Captain James Cook in the 1770s, coupled with the loss of the American colonies around the same time, that changed this. Though remote, Australia became important to the British, both as a strategic [strə'ti:ʤɪk] port near East Asia, and as a destination for British convicts (['kɔnvɪkt] заключённый) after the loss of the American colonies. As a result, a British fleet composed mainly of convicts was dispatched to Botany Bay in the Australian region of New South Wales, resulting in the foundation of Sydney in 1788.

In the years following the American Revolution, the British government attempted to consolidate (усиливать, укреплять) and tighten control over its territory in India and Canada. The India Act of 1785 subjected the East India Company’s administration to the scrutiny ['skru:tɪnɪ] внимательный осмотр; наблюдение) of a board of control. Under the governor-generalship (1786-1793) of Lord Cornwallis, Britain put administration in India into the hands of a professional civil service within the East India Company, though the company itself remained a trading concern. The Canada Act of 1791 attempted to ease tensions between French and British inhabitants in Canada somewhat by separating the region into Upper Canada, primarily English speaking, and Lower Canada, primarily French speaking.

Th century

The Napoleonic Wars

Britain’s involvement in wars with France after 1793 gave a fresh spur (толчок, побуждение, стимул) to the growth of its empire. In 1794 Britain again captured the French sugar-producing islands in the Caribbean. This resulted in a glut (избыток, излишек) of sugar on the British market and contributed indirectly to British legislation in 1807 abolishing the slave trade, by virtue of the fact (на основании чего-л.) that production was so high that few new slaves were needed.

Britain’s Mediterranean position and its route to the east were secured during the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), primarily due to the naval triumphs of British Admiral Nelson. First, Nelson stopped Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt at the Battle of the Nile, which gave control of the entire Mediterranean to the British. Then, at the Battle of Trafalgar (мыс на юге Испании), Nelson destroyed a French fleet on its way to land troops in Italy. By decimating (['desɪmeɪt] истреблять) the French navy, Nelson ended any possible threat to the British islands from Napoleon and ensured British naval superiority for much of the 19th century.

America was not a theater of operations until friction (разногласия) over neutral trading rights and boundaries led to the War of 1812, during which the Americans seized York (now Toronto) in Upper Canada, and the British sacked (присваивать) Washington, D.C. The inability of American forces to make significant advances into Canada confirmed the survival of British North America.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the Netherlands sided with France, and Britain seized several Dutch possessions, including the Cape Colony, in South Africa; Ceylon [sɪ'lɔn ] (later Sri Lanka ['srɪ'læŋkə]), off the Indian coast; Java ['ʤɑ:və], in Indonesia; and parts of Guiana [gī'anə], in South America. Though Java was returned to the Dutch, most of these possessions were retained by the British under the agreement reached in 1815.

(Cape Colony early name (1814 - 1910) for the former Cape Province

Cape Province – Капская провинция (ЮАР) – a former province of South Africa, containing the Cape of Good Hope. The area became a British colony in 1814: it was known as Cape Colony from then until 1910, when it joined the Union of South Africa. In 1994 it was divided into the provinces of Northern Cape, Western Cape, and Eastern Cape)

South Africa

The acquisition of the Cape Colony from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars allowed the British to establish a strong presence in southern Africa. Thousands of British colonists began to arrive after 1820, and English became the official language in 1822. Slavery, which had been heavily relied upon by the Dutch, was abolished in 1833. In 1843 the British established the coastal colony of Natal ([nə'täl] a province on the eastern coast of South Africa that was renamed KwaZulu-Natal in 1994).

The Boers ['bəuə] who were descendants of the original Dutch and German settlers that settled in southern Africa in the late 17th century, resented British rule, and thousands of the Boers migrated north, eventually founding the interior African republics of the Transvaal ['trænzvɑ:l ] Трансвааль (провинция ЮАР) and the Orange Free State (ЮАР).

The Boers were Calvinist in religion and fiercely self-sufficient. Conflict with the British administration of Cape Colony after 1806 led to the Great Trek of 1835 - 37 and the Boer Wars, after which the Boer republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State became part of the Republic of South Africa. The Boers' present-day descendants are the Afrikaners [æfrɪ'kɑ:nə]).

India

In India, Lord Arthur Wellesley, later the Duke of Wellington, made a series of conquests, so that by 1805 Britain in effect controlled Delhi ['delɪ] and had made the native Mughal emperor into a puppet. In 1828 English replaced Persian ['pɜ:ʒənj], as the official language of government in India, and Christian missionary ['mɪʃ(ə)n(ə)rɪ] activity increased. British superiority was finally completed with the conquest of the Punjab and Sind regions in the 1840s.

However, the Indian population gradually began to resent British rule, feeling that the British had no respect for native cultures and traditions. These feelings came to a head in the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857, in which Indian soldiers (called sepoys ['si:pɔɪ]) under the command of the East India Company staged an armed uprising. The rebellion was put down by the British, but not before extensive loss of life on both sides. As a result, the British gave up trying to anglicize India and focused on governing efficiently while working in tandem ['tændəm] with traditional elements of Indian society. After 1858 India ceased to be administered through the East India Company and was brought directly under British government, with a viceroy ['vaɪsrɔɪ] (a ruler exercising authority in a colony on behalf of a sovereign) and a separate secretary of state in London who served in the Cabinet.

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