With the help of Spain , France and the Netherlands, they won the war, and gained independence , becoming the United States of America. By the early s, huge parts of Africa — including Egypt , Kenya , Nigeria and large areas of southern Africa — all came under British rule. The British Empire was larger and more powerful than ever…. She was even Empress of India! Here she is pictured on a Canadian postage stamp during her reign. The unjust treatment of indigenous peoples ran the course of the British Empire.
For example, in North America, local people were taken advantage of by greedy traders, robbed of their land and even faced violence and death at the hands of British settlers. During the Second World War , India suffered some of the worst famines lack of food in human history, partly caused by the British government taking vital supplies away from the Indian people to support the war effort elsewhere — causing the death of millions.
Indigenous peoples in Africa were affected in their millions. The British took valuable materials like gold , salt and ivory out of Africa and sent it back to Britain, and elsewhere. The British were also heavily involved in the Transatlantic Slave Trade in West Africa — more on that, in the next section.
Many indigenous peoples, including Indigenous Australians , lost not just their land, food and possessions, but their traditions, too. When British settlers arrived, they forcibly replaced the beliefs , language and traditions of indigenous populations with their own, removing their cultural identities.
In some countries, these changes are still a source of conflict, even now. Today, many indigenous communities are trying to reconnect with the heritage the British tried to erase, by celebrating their cultural identities and protecting them for the future.
Throughout history, slavery has existed on all continents and in many societies , but when the European imperialists arrived in Africa in the 15th Century, they began the most organised slave operation the world had ever seen — the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Over the next years, European traders bought and sold an estimated 12 million African people , who were forcibly taken from their homes and shipped across the ocean to the Americas and Europe , where their buyers forced them to work. Of those 12 million Africans, British slave traders are estimated to have bought and sold over 3 million people — although only 2.
Many enslaved people were only children, like you, and were separated from their parents and siblings. Slavery made Britain incredibly wealthy. It provided slave owners with unpaid labour to farm expensive items like sugar , tobacco and cotton , which they could sell for huge profits — at the expense of the enslaved people and their homelands.
Britain banned the trading of enslaved people in its empire in , known as Abolition but it was a further 26 years until it outlawed slavery altogether known as Emancipation. People considered them less important than white people, and used these beliefs to help them justify the former trading of enslaved people.
No compensation was paid to the enslaved people themselves! The compensation sum was vast , and in fact, the loan taken out to pay for it was still being paid off by British tax payers as recently as ! Many former slave owners went on to invest their compensation money in businesses — some of which still exist today — or in development projects like the British railways.
Therefore, even though slavery had ended, its legacy continued to live on. In fact, you can still see evidence of the profits of slavery in Britain today. Just take a look at the impressive 18th and 19th Century buildings that line cities like London , Liverpool and Bristol and the grand, stately homes in the British countryside.
So, why were these countries given independence first? Well, by this time these countries had large white populations of European descent , living under the rule of formal governments. Over the next decades, however, the remaining colonies continued to push for independence. After the Second World War, Britain no longer had the wealth or strength to manage an empire overseas.
Many colonies had fought for the British during the war although people of colour were mainly given low-rank positions , and were making their own plans for independence.
In , India won its independence , and from the s to s, African colonies also fought for and won their independence. The last significant British colony, Hong Kong, was returned to China in What had taken hundreds of years to build, was broken down far quicker!
These are mainly self-governing countries separate to the United Kingdom, that continue to share a bond with Britain. In their efforts to free themselves from British rule, many people were treated cruelly — and, in some cases, demands and protests were met with violence from British forces.
They argued that British rule established formal systems of government, law and education as well as the development of infrastructure, like railways. However, this is a dated view that has been widely challenged. Many modern historians argue that it is unacceptable to say that colonialized peoples did not have or would not have developed their own entirely valid forms of government, laws, and infrastructures without the influence of the British Empire.
Furthermore, many historians argue that you cannot examine the British Empire without examining the more shameful aspects of Britain's past. Britain was heavily involved with the Transatlantic slave trade in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The only country in South America that is part of the British Commonwealth is Guyana in the continent's northern region.
The United Kingdom is, of course, part of the Commonwealth, as are a few Asian countries and the majority of southern Africa. The member states of the Commonwealth are united through shared values, history, culture, and languages. These fifty-three nations have a combined population of over two-point-three billion people, with the most densely populated countries being Bangladesh , India , Nigeria , Pakistan , and the United Kingdom. Out of all fifty-three countries, India's population accounts for most of the Commonwealth's total population.
Below are the British Commonwealth countries in alphabetical order. British Commonwealth Countries The History of the British Commonwealth. The Populations of British Commonwealth Countries As mentioned, the Commonwealth of Nations is an organization made up of fifty-three countries around the world.
Show Source. List of Commonwealth Countries - voting rights.
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