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An overview of the british empire's expansion during the 1800s, focusing on the colonies in the americas, africa, and asia. The british emerged as the most powerful seafaring nation after the napoleonic wars and added various territories to their colonial empire, including canada, the caribbean islands, british honduras and british guiana, africa, australia, and india. The british also established trading posts and forts in strategic locations and built infrastructure such as schools, roads, railway systems, and hospitals.
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The British proved to be one of the most extensive colonizers of the 1800s. Although the Napoleonic Wars between 1799 and 1815 had kept Britain and other European powers busy, after the wars ended with Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, Great Britain emerged as the most powerful seafaring nation of the Continent. In the same year, the British added to their colonial empire. In the western hemisphere, England held a colonial empire left over from earlier centuries. Canada, some Caribbean isles, and the mainland colonies of British Honduras and British Guiana flew the British flag in 1815. The British also had a toehold in Africa, with trading stations located along the west coast and in the Cape Colony, today known as South Africa, where the Dutch were already the dominant European power. British colonists swarmed over the Cape Colony, challenging the Dutch settlers in the Boer Wars. Britain also began establishing its control over eastern Africa in the same decade. Australia had become British property after a claim was laid by Captain James Cook in 1770. The British negotiated prison colony there in 1788. British sailing vessels could find friendly British controlled ports around the globe: Gibraltar, Malta, Mauritius, and St. Helena. British traders first became interested in India in the 1600s. The Moghul dynasty, which ruled India during the 1500s and 1600s, collapsed in the early 1700s, causing India to be divided into many weak but independent states. Taking advantage of the situation, the British East India Company, a powerful trading company, began building trading posts and forts in strategic locations in India in 1843, Britain annexed the lands east of Cape Colony, known as Natal. In the nineteenth century, the British further extended their control of the subcontinent. Gradually the Indian army came under British control. The British government built schools, roads, railway systems, and hospitals. Many British customs and laws were made part of the Indian way of life. Many Indians believed that the British were trying to convert them to Christianity. Most Indians were Hindus and some were Muslim. Although the people of India had accepted the British system of democratic government, the people of India never changed their culture and caste system. Religion always remained the most important focus of Indian life. Indians began to resent the British. In 1857, sepoys , or Indian soldiers(both Muslim and Hindu) under British command, rebelled against foreign rule and British influence. The immediate cause of the revolt was the British requirement that the soldiers use a rifle with cartridges that the sepoys believed were greased with beef or pork fat. In order to fire the rifles, the sepoys had to bite off the seal of the cartridge for fast reloading. Both Hindus, who believed the cow to be sacred, and Muslims, whose religion forbade them to eat pork, were angered by this. The violent Sepoy Mutiny was an attempt by the Indians to gain their independence. However, British forces retaliated harshly and overthrew the Indian government of the Mogul empire. The 1840s witnessed Britain going to war with China when the British attempted to force the Chinese to import Indian-produced opium, a legal drug at the time. The Opium War produced a British victory and a settlement known as the Treaty of Nanking (1842), which gave ownership of Hong Kong to Britain and opened several key Chinese ports to British trade. In 1877 the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli proclaimed Queen Victoria Empress of India. It was the sense of national pride felt by the British as the empire of Victoria extended itself around the world, so that, as was often said, “ The sun never sets on the British Empire .”