English overseas possessions

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"English Empire" redirects here. For the colonial empire of Great Britain and the United Kingdom, see British Empire. For the Americas in particular, see British colonization of the Americas. For the "empire" of the Plantagenets, see Angevin Empire.

All English overseas possessions in 1700, shortly before the Acts of Union of 1707

The English overseas possessions, also known as the English colonial empire, comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonised, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the former Kingdom of England during the centuries before the Acts of Union of 1707 between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland created the Kingdom of Great Britain. The many English possessions then became the foundation of the British Empire and its fast-growing naval and mercantile power, which until then had yet to overtake those of the Dutch Republic, the Kingdom of Portugal, and the Crown of Castile.

The first English overseas settlements were established in

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 until then had been Portuguese, including Tangier in North Africa and Bombay
in India.

In North America,

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

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.

The first English overseas expansion occurred as early as 1169, when the

Cork city, on land leased from the Earl of Desmond.[9] Grenville also seized lands for colonization at Tracton, to the west of Cork harbour in 1569. In the early 17th century the Plantation of Ulster began.[10][page needed] English control of Ireland fluctuated for centuries until Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
in 1801.

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.[11] He led another voyage to the Americas the following year, but nothing was heard of him or his ships again.[12]

The

Saint Lawrence River, which later became New France.[15]

The first English overseas colonies

The first English overseas colonies started in 1556 with the

West Country men.[17]

The first English colonies overseas in America was made in the last quarter of the 16th century, in the

Queen Elizabeth.[18] The 1580s saw the first attempt at permanent English settlements in North America, a generation before the Plantation of Ulster and occurring a little bit after the plantation of Munster. 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.

Queen Elizabeth

Early claims

Financed by 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, 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.[19][20] While on the coast of Greenland, he also claimed that for England.[21]

At the same time, between 1577 and 1580,

Straits of Magellan.[22] In 1579, he landed on the north coast of California, claiming the area for Elizabeth as "New Albion".[23] However, these claims were not followed up by settlements.[24]

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.[25][26]

The first overseas settlements

Re-enactment of English settlers arriving in Virginia, 1607

On 25 March 1584, Queen Elizabeth I granted

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".[27]

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".[28] 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 are now India and Bangladesh.

Most of the new English colonies established in North America and the

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, each incorporated during the early 1600s, were charter colonies, as was Virginia for a time. They were established through land patents issued by the Crown for specified tracts of land. In a few instances the charter specified that the colony's territory extended westward to the Pacific Ocean
. The charter of Connecticut, Massachusetts Bay and Virginia each contained this "sea to sea" provision.

British Overseas Territory, was settled and claimed by England as a result of the shipwreck there in 1609 of the Virginia Company's flagship Sea Venture. The town of St George's, 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.[29][30]

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.[31] The most substantial English settlement in that period was at Barbados.

In 1660,

Bombay in India as part of her dowry. Tangier proved very expensive to hold and was abandoned in 1684.[32]

After the Dutch surrender of

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 U.S. 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.[33]

The Americas

List of English possessions in North America

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

List of English possessions in the West Indies

  • Barbados, first visited by an English ship, the Olive Blossom, in 1605,[40] was not settled by England until 1625,[41] soon becoming the third major English settlement in the Americas after Jamestown, Virginia, and the Plymouth Colony.
  • Saint Kitts was settled by the English in 1623, followed by the French in 1625. The English and French united to massacre the local Kalinago, pre-empting a Kalinago plan to massacre the Europeans, and then partitioned the island, with the English in the middle and the French at either end. In 1629 a Spanish force seized St Kitts, but the English settlement was rebuilt following the peace between England and Spain in 1630. The island then alternated between English and French control during the 17th and 18th centuries until it became permanently associated with Britain since 1783.
  • Nevis, settled 1628
  • Providence Island colony, settled by the Providence Island Company in 1629 and captured by Spain in 1641.
  • Montserrat, settled 1632
  • Antigua, settled in 1632 by a group of English colonists from Saint Kitts
  • The Bahamas were mostly deserted from 1513 to 1648, when the Eleutheran Adventurers left Bermuda to settle on the island of Eleuthera.
  • Anguilla, first colonized by English settlers from St Kitts in 1650; the French gained the island in 1666, but under the Treaty of Breda of 1667 it was returned to England
  • Jamaica, formerly a Spanish possession known as Santiago, it was conquered by the English in 1655.
  • Barbuda, first settled by the Spanish and French, was colonized by the English in 1666.
  • The Cayman Islands were visited by Sir Francis Drake in 1586, who named them. They were largely uninhabited until the 17th century, when they were informally settled by pirates, refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, shipwrecked sailors, and deserters from Oliver Cromwell's army in Jamaica. England gained control of the islands, together with Jamaica, under the Treaty of Madrid of 1670.

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

English Tangier, 1670
Fort Gambia

English possessions in Europe

See also: Angevin Empire

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

British colonies.[49]

List of English possessions which are still British Overseas Territories

Timeline

See also

References

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  5. ^ Moody, T. W.; Martin, F. X., eds. (1967). The Course of Irish History. Cork: Mercier Press. p. 370.
  6. ^ Ranelagh, John (1994). A Short History of Ireland. Cambridge University Press. p. 36.
  7. ^ Edwards, Ruth Dudley; Hourican, Bridget (2005). An Atlas of Irish History. Psychology Press. pp. 33–34.
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  9. ^ Lennon, Colm. Sixteenth Century Ireland, the Incomplete Conquest, pp. 211–213
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  12. ^ Ferguson, Niall. Colossus: The Price of America's Empire (Penguin, 2004, p. 4)
  13. ^ Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: the History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Picador, 1997), pp. 155–158.
  14. ^ Ferguson (2004), p. 7.
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  19. ^ The Nunavut Voyages of Martin Frobisher at web site of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, accessed 5 August 2011
  20. ^ Cooke, Alan (1979) [1966]. "Frobisher, Sir Martin". In Brown, George Williams (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. I (1000–1700) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.
  21. ISBN 0-3000-8380-7.) p. 190
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  23. ^ Dell'Osso, John (October 12, 2016). "Drakes Bay National Historic Landmark Dedication". NPS.gov. National Park Service. Retrieved January 23, 2019.
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  26. ^ Quinn, David B. (1979) [1966]. "Gilbert, Sir Humphrey". In Brown, George Williams (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. I (1000–1700) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press.
  27. ^ Quinn, David B. Set fair for Roanoke: voyages and colonies, 1584–1606 (1985)
  28. ^ 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.
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  30. ^ Shorto, Lt. Col. Gavin. The Bermudian: Bermuda in the Privateering Business Archived 2011-07-16 at the Wayback Machine
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  32. ^ a b Wreglesworth, John. Tangier: England's Forgotten Colony (1661-1684), p. 6
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  39. ^ Doyle, John Andrew. English Colonies in America: The Puritan colonies (1889) chapter 8, p. 220
  40. ^ Schomburg, Sir Robert. History of Barbados (2012 edition), p. 258
  41. ^ Thwaites, Reuben Gold. The Colonies, 1492-1750 (1927), p. 245
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  45. ^ "Catherine of Bragança (1638–1705)". BBC. Retrieved 5 November 2008.
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  47. ^ David, M. D. History of Bombay, 1661–1708 (1973) p. 410
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  49. ^ Treaty of Union of the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England at scotshistoryonline.co.uk, accessed 2 August 2011

Further reading

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