English overseas possessions

"English Empire" redirects here. For the colonial empire of Great Britain and the United Kingdom, see British Empire. For the "empire" of the Plantagenets, see Angevin Empire.
English overseas possessions in 1700

The English overseas possessions comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonized, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the former Kingdom of England during the centuries before the Acts of Union between England and the Kingdom of Scotland. In 1707 these created the Kingdom of Great Britain, when the many English possessions became the foundation of the British Empire.

The first English overseas settlements were established in Ireland, quickly followed by North America, Bermuda, and the West Indies, and by trading posts called "factories" in the East Indies, such as Bantam, and in the Indian subcontinent, beginning with Surat. In 1639, a series of English fortresses on the Indian coast was initiated with Fort St George. In 1661, the marriage of King Charles II to Catherine of Braganza brought him as part of her dowry new possessions which had been Portuguese, including Tangier in North Africa and Bombay in India.

In North America, Newfoundland and Virginia were the first centres of English colonization. As the 17th century wore on, Maine, Plymouth, New Hampshire, Salem, Massachusetts Bay, New Scotland, Connecticut, New Haven, Maryland, and Rhode Island and Providence were settled. In 1664, New Netherland and New Sweden were taken from the Dutch, becoming New York, New Jersey, and parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Origins

A replica of Cabot's ship, the Matthew

The Kingdom of England is generally dated to the rule of Æthelstan from 927.[1] During the rule of the House of Knýtlinga, from 1013-1014 and 1016-1042, England was part of a personal union that included domains in Scandinavia. In 1066, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, conquered England, making the Duchy a Crown land of the English throne. Through the remainder of the Middle Ages the kings of England held extensive territories in France, based on their history in this Duchy. Under the Angevin Empire, England formed part of a collection of lands in the British Isles and France held by the Plantagenet dynasty. The collapse of this dynasty led to the Hundred Years' War between England and France. At the outset of the war the Kings of England ruled almost all of France, but by the end of it in 1453 only the Pale of Calais remained to them.[2] Calais was eventually lost to the French in 1558. The Channel Islands, as the remnants of the Duchy of Normandy, retain their link to the Crown to the present day,

Other early English expansion occurred within the British Isles. As early as 1169, the Norman invasion of Ireland began to establish English possessions in the island of Ireland, with thousands of English and Welsh settlers arriving in Ireland.[3] As a result of this the Lordship of Ireland was held for centuries by the English monarch, although it was not until the early 17th century that the Plantation of Ulster was begun.[4] English control of Ireland fluctuated for centuries until Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.

The Voyages of Christopher Columbus began in 1492, and he sighted land in the West Indies on 12 October that year. In 1496, excited by the successes in overseas exploration of the Portuguese and the Spanish, King Henry VII of England commissioned John Cabot to lead a voyage to find a route from the Atlantic to the Spice Islands of Asia, subsequently known as the search for the North West Passage. Cabot sailed in 1497, successfully making landfall on the coast of Newfoundland. There, he believed he had reached Asia and made no attempt to found a permanent colony.[5] He led another voyage to the Americas the following year, but nothing was heard of him or his ships again.[6]

The Reformation had made enemies of England and Spain, and in 1562 Elizabeth sanctioned the privateers Hawkins and Drake to attack Spanish ships off the coast of West Africa.[7] Later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth approved further raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and against shipping returning to Europe with treasure from the New World.[8] Meanwhile, the influential writers Richard Hakluyt and John Dee were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own overseas empire. Spain was well established in the Americas, while Portugal had built up a network of trading posts and fortresses on the coasts of Africa, Brazil, and China, and the French had already begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River, which later became New France.[9]

The first English overseas colonies

The first serious attempts to establish English colonies overseas were made in the last quarter of the 16th century, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.[10] The 1580s saw the first attempt at permanent English settlements in North America, a generation before the Plantation of Ulster. Soon there was an explosion of English colonial activity, driven by men seeking new land, by the pursuit of trade, and by the search for religious freedom. In the 17th century, the destination of most English people making a new life overseas was in the West Indies rather than in North America.

Early claims

Financed by the Muscovy Company, Martin Frobisher set sail on 7 June 1576, from Blackwall, London, seeking the North West Passage. In August 1576 he landed at Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island and this was marked by the first Church of England service recorded on North American soil. Frobisher returned to Frobisher Bay in 1577, solemnly taking possession of the south side of it in Queen Elizabeth's name. In a third voyage, in 1578, he reached the shores of Greenland and also made an unsuccessful attempt at founding a settlement in Frobisher Bay.[11][12] While on the coast of Greenland, he also claimed that for England.[13]

At the same time, between 1577 and 1580, Sir Francis Drake was circumnavigating the globe. He claimed Elizabeth Island off Cape Horn for his queen, and on 24 August 1578 claimed another Elizabeth Island, in the Straits of Magellan.[14] In 1579, he landed on the north coast of California, claiming the area for Elizabeth as "New Albion".[15] However, these claims were not followed up by settlements.[16]

In 1578, while Drake was away on his circumnavigation, Queen Elizabeth granted a patent for overseas exploration to his half-brother Humphrey Gilbert, and that year Gilbert sailed for the West Indies to engage in piracy and to establish a colony in North America. However, the expedition was abandoned before the Atlantic had been crossed. In 1583, Gilbert sailed to Newfoundland, where in a formal ceremony he took possession of the harbour of St John's together with all land within two hundred leagues to the north and south of it, although he left no settlers behind him. He did not survive the return journey to England.[17][18]

The first overseas settlements

Re-enactment of English settlers arriving in Virginia, 1607

On 25 March 1584, Queen Elizabeth I (the "Virgin Queen") granted Sir Walter Raleigh a charter for the colonization of an area of North America which was to be called, in her honour, Virginia. This charter specified that Raleigh had seven years in which to establish a settlement, or else lose his right to do so. Raleigh and Elizabeth intended that the venture should provide riches from the New World and a base from which to send privateers on raids against the treasure fleets of Spain. Raleigh himself never visited North America, although he led expeditions in 1595 and 1617 to the Orinoco River basin in South America in search of the golden city of El Dorado. Instead, he sent others to found the Roanoke Colony, later known as the "Lost Colony".[19]

On 31 December 1600, Elizabeth gave a charter to the East India Company, under the name "The Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies".[20] The Company soon established its first trading post in the East Indies, at Bantam on the island of Java, and others, beginning with Surat, on the coasts of what is now India and Bangladesh.

Most of the new English colonies established in North America and the West Indies, whether successfully or otherwise, were proprietary colonies with Proprietors, appointed to found and govern settlements under mercantile charters granted to joint stock companies. Early examples of these are the Virginia Company, which created the first successful English overseas settlements at Jamestown in 1607 and Bermuda, unofficially in 1609 and officially in 1612, its spin-off, the Somers Isles Company, to which Bermuda (also known as the Somers Isles) was transferred in 1615, and the Newfoundland Company which settled Cuper's Cove near St. John's, Newfoundland in 1610. Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts Bay were also charter colonies.

Bermuda, today the oldest-remaining British Overseas Territory, was settled and claimed by England as a result of the 1609 shipwreck there of the Virginia Company's flagship. St. George's town, founded in Bermuda in 1612, remains the oldest continuously-inhabited English settlement in the New World. Some historians state that with its formation predating the conversion of "James Fort" into "Jamestown" in 1619, St. George's was actually the first successful town the English established in the New World. Bermuda and Bermudians have played important, sometimes pivotal, roles in the shaping of the English and British trans-Atlantic empires. These include roles in maritime commerce, settlement of the continent and of the West Indies, and the projection of naval power via the colony's privateers, among others.[21][22]

Between 1640 and 1660, the West Indies were the destination of more than two-thirds of English emigrants to the New World. By 1650, there were 44,000 English people in the Caribbean, compared to 12,000 on the Chesapeake and 23,000 in New England.[23] The most substantial English settlement in that period was at Barbados.

In 1660, King Charles II established the Royal African Company, essentially a trading company dealing in slaves, led by his brother James, Duke of York. In 1661, Charles's marriage to the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza brought him the ports of Tangier in Africa and Bombay in India as part of her dowry. Tangier proved very expensive to hold and was abandoned in 1684.[24]

After the Dutch surrender of Fort Amsterdam to English control in 1664, England took over the Dutch colony of New Netherland, including New Amsterdam. Formalized in 1667, this contributed to the Second Anglo–Dutch War. In 1664, New Netherland was renamed the Province of New York. At the same time, the English also came to control the former New Sweden, in the present-day US State of Delaware, which had also been a Dutch possession and later became part of Pennsylvania. In 1673, the Dutch regained New Netherland, but they gave it up again under the Treaty of Westminster of 1674.

Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations

In 1621, following a downturn in overseas trade which had created financial problems for the Exchequer, King James instructed his Privy Council to establish an ad hoc committee of inquiry to look into the causes of the decline. This was called The Lords of the Committee of the Privy Council appointed for the consideration of all matters relating to Trade and Foreign Plantations. Intended to be a temporary creation, the committee, later called a 'Council', became the origin of the Board of Trade which has had an almost continuous existence since 1621. The Committee quickly took a hand in promoting the more profitable enterprises of the English possessions, and in particular the production of tobacco and sugar.[25]

The Americas

List of English possessions in North America

Captain John Smith, 'Admiral of New England'
Plaque at St John's marking Sir Humphrey Gilbert's landing there in 1583

List of English possessions in the West Indies

List of English possessions in Central and South America

English possessions in India and the East Indies

Fort St George, Madras, the first English fortress in India

English possessions in Africa

A map of James Island and Fort Gambia.

Gibraltar 1704

Capture of Gibraltar. In 1704 Gibraltar was captured for England by an Anglo-Dutch fleet, becoming the country's first European overseas possession since the loss of the Pale of Calais in 1558. The Naval operation was commanded by George Rooke. Gibraltar later became a strategic naval base for the Royal Navy and was officially ceded to Great Britain in 1713.

Transformation into British Empire

The Treaty of Union of 1706, which with effect from 1707 combined England and Scotland into a new sovereign state called Great Britain, provided for the subjects of the new state to "have full freedom and intercourse of trade and navigation to and from any port or place within the said united kingdom and the Dominions and Plantations thereunto belonging". While the Treaty of Union also provided for the winding up of the Scottish African and Indian Company, it made no such provision for the English companies or colonies. In effect, with the Union they became British colonies.[41]

List of English possessions which are still British Overseas Territories

North America and the West Indies

Africa

Europe

Pacific

See also

Notes

  1. Keynes, 'Edward, King of the Anglo Saxons'., p. 61
  2. Ralph A. Griffiths, King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (2003, ISBN 1852850183), p. 53
  3. Thomas Bartlett, Ireland: A History (2010, ISBN 0521197201) p. 40
  4. George Hill, The Fall of Irish Chiefs and Clans and the Plantation of Ulster (2004, ISBN 094013442X)
  5. Kenneth Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630 (Cambridge University Press, 1984, ISBN 0-521-27698-5) p. 45
  6. Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America's Empire (Penguin, 2004, p. 4
  7. Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: the History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Picador, 1997), pp. 155–158
  8. Ferguson (2004), p. 7
  9. Trevor Owen Lloyd, The British Empire 1558–1995 (Oxford University Press, 1996, ISBN 0-19-873134-5), pp. 4–8.
  10. Nicholas Canny, The Origins of Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. I (Oxford University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-19-924676-9), p. 35
  11. The Nunavut Voyages of Martin Frobisher at web site of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, accessed 5 August 2011
  12. Sir Martin Frobisher, biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, accessed 5 August 2011
  13. James McDermott, Martin Frobisher: Elizabethan privateer (Yale University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-300-08380-7) p. 190
  14. 14.0 14.1 Francis Fletcher, The World encompassed by Sir Francis Drake (1854 edition by the Hakluyt Society, p. 75
  15. The Drake’s Cove site began its review by the National Park Service (NPS) in 1994 , thus starting an 18-year study of the suggested Drake sites. The first formal Nomination to mark the Nova Albion site at Drake’s Cove as a National Historic Landmark was provided to NPS on January 1, 1996. As part of its review, NPS obtained independent, confidential comments from professional historians. The NPS staff concluded that the Drake’s Cove site is the “most probable” and “most likely” Drake landing site. The National Park System Advisory Board Landmarks Committee sought public comments on the Port of Nova Albion Historic and Archaeological District Nomination and received more than two dozen letters of support and none in opposition. At the Committee’s meeting of November 9, 2011 in Washington, DC, representatives of the government of Spain, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Congresswoman Lynn Wolsey all spoke in favor of the nomination: there was no opposition. Staff and the Drake Navigators Guild’s president, Edward Von der Porten, gave the presentation. The Nomination was strongly endorsed by Committee Member Dr. James M. Allan, Archeologist, and the Committee as a whole which approved the nomination unanimously. The National Park System Advisory Board sought further public comments on the Nomination : no additional comments were received. At the Board’s meeting on December 1, 2011 in Florida, the Nomination was further reviewed: the Board approved the nomination unanimously. On October 16, 2012 Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar signed the nomination and on October 17, 2012,The Drakes Bay Historic and Archaeological District was formally announced as a new National Historic Landmark.
  16. John Sugden, Sir Francis Drake (Barrie & Jenkins, 1990, ISBN 0-7126-2038-9), p. 118
  17. Andrews (1984), pp. 188-189
  18. 'GILBERT (Gylberte, Jilbert), SIR HUMPHREY', in Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online, (University of Toronto, 2005) web page: DC-HGilbert
  19. David B. Quinn, Set fair for Roanoke: voyages and colonies, 1584–1606 (1985)
  20. The register of letters, &c: of the governour and company of merchants of London trading into the East Indies, 1600–1619 (B. Quaritch, 1893), p. 3.
  21. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia and Essays in History review of In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783, By Michael J. Jarvis, Published for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia. ISBN 978-0-8078-3321-6
  22. Lt. Col. Gavin Shorto, The Bermudian: Bermuda in the Privateering Business
  23. Alan Taylor, Colonial America: A Very Short Introduction (2012), p. 78
  24. 24.0 24.1 John Wreglesworth, Tangier: England's Forgotten Colony (1661-1684), p. 6
  25. Encyclopædia Britannica: a new survey of universal knowledge (Volume 10, 1963), p. 583
  26. Nicholas Canny, The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume I, 2001, ISBN 0-19-924676-9.
  27. "Early Settlement Schemes". Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Web Site Project. Memorial University of Newfoundland. 1998. Retrieved 2010-01-09.
  28. Paul O'Neill, The Oldest City: The Story of St. John's, Newfoundland, 2003, ISBN 0-9730271-2-6.
  29. "William Vaughan and New Cambriol". Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage Web Site Project. Memorial University of Newfoundland. Retrieved 2010-01-09.
  30. Permanent Settlement at Avalon, Colony of Avalon Foundation, Revised March 2002, accessed 6 August 2011
  31. John Andrew Doyle, English Colonies in America: The Puritan colonies (1889) chapter 8, p. 220
  32. Sir Robert Schomburg, History of Barbados (2012 edition), p. 258
  33. Reuben Gold Thwaites, The Colonies, 1492-1750 (1927), p. 245
  34. Canny, p. 71
  35. East India Company, The Register of Letters &c. of the Governour and Company of Merchants of London Trading Into the East Indies, 1600-1619 (B. Quaritch, 1893), pp. lxxiv, 33
  36. N. S. Ramaswami, Fort St. George, Madras (Madras, 1980; Tamilnadu State Department of Archaeology, No. 49)
  37. "Catherine of Bragança (1638–1705)". BBC. Retrieved 5 November 2008.
  38. The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island 1978, p. 54
  39. M. D. David, History of Bombay, 1661–1708 (1973) p. 410
  40. F. L. Carsten, The New Cambridge Modern History V (The ascendancy of France 1648–88) (Cambridge University Press, 1961, ISBN 978-0-521-04544-5), p. 427
  41. Treaty of Union of the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England at scotshistoryonline.co.uk, accessed 2 August 2011

Further reading

Primary sources