The Colonialism

The Colonialism

1) The first English colony was Ireland conquered at the end of the 16 th century.

2) In the Elisabeth I period, Britain began to colonize a great part of the territories of the World.

3) Elisabeth I tried to create a sort of voyages to discover new lands, in this way it was a geographical discovery; it was also a conquest and exploitation of these new lands.

4) In the 18 th century Britain could extend its power in other parts of the World. First of all they "conquered" Canada, India, Gibraltar and thirteen North American colonies; that mean that Britain had a vast control on most of World in every continent. Even if they lost the control of the 13 North American colonies, after their declaration of independence, few years later Britain took the power of Malta, Ceylon and other territories in Africa and Central America.

These kinds of conquests are connected to the Industrial Revolution and in this way Britain had aims to commandeer most of the raw materials from overseas countries to feed the British industries and to control the European but also World trade.

5) Other territories became colonies of Britain during Queen Victoria's Ages, these are: South Africa, Malaysia, Cyprus and Burna.

Between 1867 and 1921 Canada, Australia and New Zeeland could decide on their own which policies to pursue but they were always considered British territories.

6) The industrial revolution is linked to the Colonisation because, thanks to this development of industries, the mother land could enrich the market with new goods that were produced in Britain through the transformation of the raw materials into final products.

These raw materials came from the overseas colonies, in this way the mother land had a vast control on these countries and the colonies were obliged to trade just with Britain at high prices.

7) Yes they did. In fact the colonisation, that is the policy of a State to assure a large number of territories to control, favoured the foreign policy of Britain. They could check almost of the world trade because their Empire was composed by a lot of territories and these had just to trade with their mother land. The other European nations couldn't sell their products to the English colonies. The overseas territories were obliged to buy the empire products at any price.

In this way Britain was sure that its market couldn't stop and the productive cycle could go on without any trouble.

8) The relationships between Britain and the colonies were very close. The mother land controlled the political and economic sector of all its territories.

These were influenced in a lot of socials fields. The language, the religion, the culture and the traditions were unified.

9) These kind of controlled territories were defined in a different way: there were the colonies, the dominions and the protectorates.

The colonies could be, on their side, divided into 2 types: the settled colonies, populated by Anglo-Saxons people who transferred overseas, and conquered colonies, or rather those territories who coming from the hold of possession through strength.

10) Britain got from these possessions raw materials and men power (slaves).

The raw materials consisted in cotton from America and Egypt, wool from Australia and New Zeeland, silk from India.

The products were potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco and coffee from America, tea from India.

The metals were gold, stone and silver that came from America.

11) The British Empire was officially founded in 1876 during the reign of Queen Victoria.

12) The sovereign was Queen Victoria who reigned for 64 years.

13) Metaphorically this sentence means that this empire would never reach the decline, it would always been for a long time a steady and flourishing wealth.

But it would actually mean that the empire was so vast that when in a country it was night, in another wan was day. In the end, It represented one of the most important power of the World.