This course will examine the growth and development of the largest empire in world history - the British Empire - beginning with the late fifteenth century Tudor dynasty in England and ending with the death of the Queen-Empress Victoria in 1901. By the beginning of the twentieth century, there were very few countries or people who had not been affected, one way or another, by the impact of the British. The Empire itself by then covered over a quarter of the world's land surface, the Royal Navy dominated the oceans, and one in every four human beings lived under British rule. Yet despite all of this global power and the emergence of Britain by the beginning of the nineteenth century as the world's first true superpower, the British Empire had very humble, small-scale origins. In the course, we shall proceed chronologically, but also look more closely at particular themes and countries. The course will not provide a fully comprehensive survey, an enormous task anyway; rather, we shall seek to uncover and understand the essential historical truths about this mightiest of empires.Lecture 1 The Tudor Empire from the Discovery of Newfoundland in 1497 to the Founding of Virginia and the Death of Elizabeth I in 1603
Lecture 2 Colonies in the New World
Lecture 3 The British in India, c. 1600-1815
Lecture 4 The American Revolution and the Restructured Empire
Lecture 5 Australia and New Zealand: Convicts, Settlers, and Self-Government
Lecture 6 Ireland: Mother Country or Exploited British Colony?
Lecture 7 The Canadian Crisis and the Spread of Internal Colonial Self-Government
Lecture 8 Trade and Dominion: The Profits and Commerce of Empire
Lecture 9 The British Raj, 1815 to 1905: The High Noon of Empire in India
Lecture 10 The Suez Canal, Egypt, Sudan, and the Middle East
Lecture 11 The Partition of Africa: Opening Up the "Dark Continent"
Lecture 12 Empire Builders and Empire Critics
Lecture 13 Conflict and War in South Africa
Lecture 14 Hurrah for the Jubilee! Queen Victoria's 1897 Diamond Jubilee and the Meaning of Empire