The British Empire

The British Empire

The first reason why The British Empire began is trade. Countries had to exchange with goods, they were ought to do it to survive. That was happening in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. And it was expanding. This happened in India, where the East India Company took over Indian lands in the eighteenth century. Because the population kept on growing, Britain could not feed its population. Britain needed to import food. Most of the goods come from Canada - it was the biggest exporter.

In 1760s there was almost nothing but then it grows by 1830s and it's all controlled by Britain. The first British settlement was in Australia, in "Botany Bay" in 1800s. Captain Cook took on board scientists-botanists. They reached Bay on 18 January 1788 with 1530 people. The settlement grew to be Sydney, Australia's biggest city with one of the world's best natural harbors. It was named Sydney of Britain's home secretary, Lord Sydney (1733-1800), who was responsible for the colony.

The British Empire expanded and contracted wildly over the years. It became fairly large with the ever expanding American colonies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, particularly after the defeat of the French in the Seven Years War. The American Revolution lost much (but not all) of this territory, but the expansion of British interests in India filled this vacuum. These would generally provide the jumping off points for the massive expansion in the Victorian period. Advances in medicine and communications helped open up the last continent of Africa to European Imperialism in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century.

Joseph Banks was one of the greatest botanists. He was one of the scientists on the board of Captain Cook. He was born in London in 1743. The plant Banksia was named after him. He passed away when he was 77 in 1820.

Britain becomes an Industrial Nation in eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Britain started producing products. They could sell them abroad, and non-industrial countries would buy those products (railway tracks, cutlery...)

So trade was the first reason of the British Empire. Another reason was the conquest and war. Many of the wars were against other European countries, such as France, with whichBritain was competing for colonies. But sometimes the wars were against the rulers of a state which appeared to threaten the British in an existing colony.

Dr David Livingstone was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa. He was born on March, 19 1813 in the mill town of Blantyre. He was a first white man who went from East Africa to South Africa and back again. He went missing for two years in central Africa, he was lost. But he might have not been lost, he could have been exploring, he was not worried whether he was lost or he was not. And because