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British Empire

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The overseas possessions of England and later the United Kingdom, from the first chartered trading companies and colonies of the early 1600s to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. They included colonies in North America and the Caribbean, rule in India first by the East India Company and then by the Crown, and much of Africa. The empire carried more than a million enslaved Africans to its Caribbean colonies, and famines struck British-ruled India.

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Key events

  1. The Virginia Company of London founds Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America

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  2. East India Company forces under Robert Clive win the Battle of Plassey, and the Company begins to hold territory in India
  3. The thirteen American colonies declare independence on 4 July; Britain loses them by the end of the war, which curtails what is often called the first British empire
  4. Parliament passes the law that abolishes the British slave trade

    The law ended the British slave trade, not slavery in the colonies, which lasted until the Slavery Abolition Act took effect.

  5. – The Slavery Abolition Act frees the enslaved in the British colonies from 1 August 1834, and the system effectively ends in 1838

    The Act was passed in 1833 and took effect on 1 August 1834. Encyclopedia.com dates the effective end of the institution to 1838. The Act's obligations on the freed people lasted until then.

  6. – Sepoys of the Bengal army rise against British rule in May 1857, and in 1858 the Crown takes over the East India Company's rule in India

    Encyclopedia.com calls the rising the Indian Mutiny and notes that in India it is known as the first war of independence. It says armed resistance lasted until spring 1859.

  7. British India is divided into the two self-governing dominions of India and Pakistan in mid-AugustDisputed

    The Indian Independence Act names 15 August 1947 as the day both dominions were set up. The Encyclopedia.com article on Pakistan dates the division to 14 August. Deaths in the partition are contested: that article says up to three million were killed, among more than 20 million who moved.

  8. Britain and France, with Israel, attack Egypt after it nationalises the Suez Canal Company, and accept a UN ceasefire on 6 November
  9. Britain hands Hong Kong over to China on 1 July, under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration

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