During this series of ten, short videos entitled “Empires”, I will be talking (as the title obviously indicates) about Empires.
But before any of you turn away, thinking that it’s going to be a boring history lesson with no relevance to the present, …
During this series of ten, short videos entitled “Empires”, I will be talking (as the title obviously indicates) about Empires.
But before any of you turn away, thinking that it’s going to be a boring history lesson with no relevance to the present, I can assure you that it is relevant to the present. Indeed, I would actually go further than that. I would argue that it’s incredibly pertinent to the present. In fact, I would even go as far as to say that I think that it’s in your best interests to continue listening. I don’t want to overstate the case, (or be patronising) but I believe that it might provide you with some valuable insights regarding the world in which we live, putting you in a better position than you otherwise would be - especially with regard to what I believe is about to take place soon. I therefore think that you should perhaps take the trouble to listen to this series of videos.
That said, I hope that I have piqued your interest enough for you to continue listening.
I also hope, of course, that you won’t find it to be too boring.
At the very least, it might add to your knowledge by furnishing you with a few more facts – and this can’t be a bad thing, can it?
So, by way of an introduction to the topic, let’s turn our attentions to the British Empire.
We are all familiar, no doubt, with the British Empire as being arguably one of the largest Empires the world has ever seen. At its height, it encompassed a quarter of the world’s population.
I’m not going to give a full account of the British Empire – not by any means. That is way beyond the remit of this video.
But I will look at beginnings and endings, along with two countries which suffered as a result of British Imperialism.
Beginnings
So, let’s briefly consider Britain’s beginnings.
It could be said that the British Empire began in earnest under the reign of Elizabeth I who ruled Britain from 1558 to 1603. I should say that prior to 1500 Britain didn’t even exist as an entity.
During the reign of Henry VIII’s, 1509 to 1547, English rule was expanded in stages to include Ireland, Wales and Scotland. This movement then formed the Great Britain of our history books.
Britain, however, was not a unified whole and it wasn’t peaceful either – not at all. Ireland, for instance, was most certainly not a conquered nation. Many Irish rebelled against rule of the English (and for good reason). There were a series of uprisings and revolts. And these rumbled on down through the ages, indeed, all the way up until relatively recently.
I think though that our interests in this video are not in Britain itself, but in its Imperial ambitions, in the realms beyond the British Isles. So, to this end, if we had to chose to one particular point in time to denote the start of the British Empire, maybe it was the founding of the East India Company in 1600. For me, this represents the first real step made towards British Imperialism.
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