As a result of
Poynings' Law of 1495, the
Parliament of Ireland was subordinate to the
Parliament of England, and after 1707 to the Parliament of Great Britain. The British parliament's
Dependency of Ireland on Great Britain Act 1719 noted that the
Irish House of Lords
had recently "assumed to themselves a Power and Jurisdiction to
examine, correct and amend" judgements of the Irish courts and declared
that as the
Kingdom of Ireland was subordinate to and dependent upon the British crown, the
King,
through the Parliament of Great Britain, had "full power and authority
to make laws and statutes of sufficient validity to bind the Kingdom and
people of Ireland".
[21] The Act was repealed by the
Repeal of Act for Securing Dependence of Ireland Act 1782.
[22] The same year, the
Irish constitution of 1782 produced a period of legislative freedom. However, the
Irish Rebellion of 1798,
which sought to end the subordination and dependency upon the British
crown and establish a republic, was one of the factors that led to the
formation of the
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.
Great Britain in the 18th century
The 18th century saw England, and after 1707 Great Britain, rise to become the world's dominant
colonial power, with France its main rival on the imperial stage.
[23] The pre-1707
English overseas possessions became the nucleus of the
British Empire.
Integration
The deeper political integration of her kingdoms was a key policy of
Queen Anne, the last Stuart monarch of England and Scotland and the first monarch of Great Britain. A
Treaty of Union
was agreed in 1706 following negotiations between representatives of
the parliaments of England and Scotland, and each parliament then passed
separate Acts of Union to ratify it. The Acts came into effect on 1 May
1707, uniting the separate Parliaments and crowns of England and
Scotland and forming a single Kingdom of Great Britain. Anne became the
first occupant of the unified British throne, and in line with Article
22 of the
Treaty of Union, Scotland sent 45 Members to join all of the existing members of the Parliament of England in the new
House of Commons of Great Britain.
[24]
Wars against France and Spain
The death of
Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to
Philip of Anjou,
a grandson of the King of France, had raised British fears of the
unification of France, Spain and their colonies. In 1701, England,
Portugal, and the
Dutch Republic sided with the
Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the
War of the Spanish Succession. The conflict lasted until 1714, until France and Spain finally lost. At the concluding
Treaty of Utrecht,
Philip renounced his and his descendants' right to the French throne.
Spain lost its empire in Europe, and although it kept its empire in the
Americas and the Philippines, it was irreversibly weakened as a great
power. The new British Empire, based upon what until 1707 had been the
English overseas possessions, was enlarged: from France, Great Britain gained
Newfoundland and
Acadia, and from Spain
Gibraltar and
Minorca. Gibraltar, which is still a
British overseas territory, became a major naval base and allowed Great Britain to control the strait connecting the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.
[25]
The
Seven Years' War, which began in 1756, was the first war waged on a global scale and saw
British involvement in Europe,
India, North America, the Caribbean, the Philippines, and coastal Africa. The signing of the
Treaty of Paris of 1763
had important consequences for Great Britain and its empire. In North
America, France's future as a colonial power was effectively ended with
the ceding of
New France to the British, leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control, and
Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. In India, the
third Carnatic War had left France still in control of its
enclaves,
but with military restrictions and an obligation to support the British
client states, effectively leaving the future of India to Great
Britain. The British victory over France in the Seven Years' War
therefore left Great Britain as the world's dominant colonial power.
[26]
Mercantilism
Mercantilism was the basic policy imposed by Great Britain on its overseas possessions.
[27]
Mercantilism meant that the government and the merchants became
partners with the goal of increasing political power and private wealth,
to the exclusion of other empires. The government protected its
merchants—and kept others out—by trade barriers, regulations, and
subsidies to domestic industries to maximise exports from and minimise
imports to the realm. The government had to fight smuggling—which became
a favourite American technique in the 18th century to circumvent the
restrictions on trading with the French, Spanish or Dutch. The goal of
mercantilism was to run trade surpluses, so that gold and silver would
pour into London. The government took its share through duties and
taxes, with the remainder going to merchants in London and other British
ports. The government spent much of its revenue on a superb Royal Navy,
which not only protected the British colonies but threatened the
colonies of the other empires, and sometimes seized them. Thus the Royal
Navy captured
New Amsterdam
(later New York) in 1664. The colonies were captive markets for British
industry, and the goal was to enrich the mother country.
[28]
American Revolution
During the 1760s and 1770s, relations between the
Thirteen Colonies
and Great Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of
resentment toward the British Parliament's ability to tax American
colonists without their consent. Disagreement turned into a violent
insurrection. In 1775, the
American Revolutionary War
began, as the Americans trapped the British army in Boston and
suppressed the Loyalists who supported the Crown. In 1776 the Americans
declared the independence of the United States of America. Under the military leadership of General
George Washington,
and, with economic and military assistance from France, the Dutch
Republic and Spain, the United States held off successive British
invasions. The Americans captured two main British armies in 1777 and
1781. After that King George III lost control of Parliament and was
unable to continue the war. It ended with the
Treaty of Paris by which Great Britain relinquished the Thirteen Colonies and recognised the
United States. The war was expensive but the British financed it successfully.
[29]
Upper and Lower Canada
After a series of "French and Indian wars," the British took slices of France's North American colonies in
New France, finally acquiring all of them (except the small islands of
Saint Pierre and Miquelon) in 1763. The former French colony of
Canada was renamed
Quebec.
Great Britain's policy was to respect Quebec's religious heritage—even
though it was Roman Catholic—as well as its legal, economic, and social
systems. By the
Quebec Act of 1774, the Province of Quebec was enlarged to include the western holdings of the American colonies. In the
American Revolutionary War, starting in 1775, the British made
Halifax, Nova Scotia,
their major base for naval action. They repulsed an American
revolutionary invasion in 1776, but in 1777 a British invasion army was
captured in New York, encouraging France to enter the war.
[30]
After the American victory, between 40,000 and 60,000
defeated Loyalists migrated, some bringing their slaves.
[31]
Most families were given free land to compensate their losses. Several
thousand free blacks also arrived; most of them later went to Sierra
Leone in Africa.
[32]
The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river
valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, were not welcome by the locals.
Therefore, in 1784 the British split off
New Brunswick
as a separate colony. The Constitutional Act of 1791 created the
provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English-speaking) and Lower Canada
(mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the French and
English-speaking communities, and implemented governmental systems
similar to those employed in Great Britain, with the intention of
asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular
control of government that was perceived to have led to the American
Revolution.
[33]
Second British Empire
The loss of the
Thirteen Colonies,
Great Britain's most populous overseas possessions, which became the
United States, marked the transition between the "first" and "second"
empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas
to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa.
[34] Adam Smith's
Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that
free trade should replace the old
mercantilist
policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion,
dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of
trade between the newly independent United States and Great Britain
after 1781
[35] confirmed Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.
India
During its first century of operation the focus of the
East India Company
had been trade, not the building of an empire in India. Company
interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the
Mughal Empire declined in power and the East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the
French East India Company (
Compagnie française des Indes orientales) during the
Carnatic Wars of the 1740s and 1750s. The
Battle of Plassey and
Battle of Buxar, which saw the British, led by
Robert Clive, defeat the Indian powers, left the company in control of
Bengal
and a major military and political power in India. In the following
decades it gradually increased the extent of the territories under its
control, ruling either directly or indirectly via local puppet rulers
under the threat of force by its
Presidency armies, much of which were composed of native Indian
sepoys.
[36][37]
Australia and New Zealand
In 1770, British explorer
James Cook had discovered the eastern coast of Australia whilst on a scientific
voyage to the South Pacific. In 1778,
Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of
Botany Bay
for the establishment of a penal settlement. Australia marks the
beginning of the Second British Empire. It was planned by the government
in London and designed as a replacement for the lost American colonies.
[38] The American Loyalist
James Matra
in 1783 wrote "A Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South
Wales" proposing the establishment of a colony composed of American
Loyalists, Chinese and South Sea Islanders (but not convicts).
[39]
Matra reasoned that the land country was suitable for plantations of
sugar, cotton and tobacco; New Zealand timber and hemp or flax could
prove valuable commodities; it could form a base for Pacific trade; and
it could be a suitable compensation for displaced American Loyalists. At
the suggestion of Secretary of State
Lord Sydney,
Matra amended his proposal to include convicts as settlers, considering
that this would benefit both "Economy to the Publick, & Humanity to
the Individual". The government adopted the basics of Matra's plan in
1784, and funded the settlement of convicts.
[40]
In 1787 the
First Fleet set sail, carrying the first shipment of
convicts to the colony. It arrived in January 1788.
Estimated US $110.1 billion in 2006 dollars