British Empire
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The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and colonisation attempts by Scotland during the 17th century. At its height in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was the largest empire in history and, for a century, was the foremost global power.
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Events on its territory
- c. 1760 Start of the Industrial Revolution
- 1769 Watt's steam engine
- 1788 First Fleet arrives in Australia
- 1792 Founding of Freetown
- 1796 Jenner's first vaccination
- 1817–1824 First cholera pandemic
- 1825 First public steam railway
- 1833 Abolition of slavery in the British Empire
- c. 1835–1846 The Great Trek
- 1840 Treaty of Waitangi
- 1845–1852 Great Famine in Ireland
- 1848 The Communist Manifesto
- 1851 The Australian gold rushes
- 1859 Darwin's On the Origin of Species
- 1867 Canadian Confederation
- 1876–1878 Great Famine in India
- 1885 The Mahdists take Khartoum
- 1893 New Zealand women win the vote
- 1894 Yersin identifies the plague bacterium
- 1897 The British sack Benin City
- 1901 Federation of Australia
- 1913 Tagore wins the Nobel Prize for Gitanjali
- 1926 First public demonstration of television
- 1928 Discovery of penicillin
- 1936 Turing's universal machine
- 1952 Great Smog of London
- 1953 Discovery of the DNA double helix
- 1957 Independence of Ghana
- 1958 Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart
- 1960 Year of Africa
- 1963 The Beatles' first album
- 1996 Dolly the sheep cloned