In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive (also known as "Starfleet General Order 1", and the "non-interference directive") is a guiding principle of Starfleet that prohibits its members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilizations. Its stated aim is to protect unprepared civilizations from the danger of starship crews introducing advanced technology, knowledge, and values before they are ready. Since its introduction in the first season of the original Star Trek series, the directive has been featured in many Star Trek episodes as part of a moral question over how best to establish diplomatic relations with new alien worlds.
The Prime Directive
The Prime Directive is one of many guidelines for Starfleet's
mandate to explore the galaxy and "seek out new life and new
civilizations." Although the concept of the Prime Directive has been
alluded to and paraphrased by many Star Trek characters during
the television series and feature films, the text of the directive was
only revealed to viewers in 2021 during the Star Trek: Prodigy episode "First Con-Tact" set in 2383. Two sections of the text were shown, and are as follows:
Section 1:
Starfleet crew will obey the following with any civilization that
has not achieved a commensurate level of technological and/or societal
development as described in Appendix 1.
a) No identification of self or mission.
b) No interference with the social, cultural, or technological development of said planet.
c) No reference to space, other worlds, or advanced civilizations.
d) The exception to this is if said society has already been exposed to
the concepts listed herein. However, in that instance, section 2
applies.
Section 2:
If said species has achieved the commensurate level of
technological and/or societal development as described in Appendix 1, or
has been exposed to the concepts listed in section 1, no Starfleet crew
person will engage with said society or species without first gathering
extensive information on the specific traditions, laws, and culture of
that species civilization. Then Starfleet crew will obey the following.
a) If engaged with diplomatic relations with said culture, will stay within the confines of said culture's restrictions.
b) No interference with the social development of said planet.
The Prime Directive was frequently applied to less developed planets which had not yet discovered warp travel or subspace
communication technology. The Prime Directive was also sometimes
applied to advanced civilizations that already knew of life on other
worlds but were protected by empires outside the Federation's
jurisdiction. First contact
could be made by the Federation with alien worlds that had either
discovered warp or were on the verge of it, or with highly advanced
civilizations that simply hadn't ventured into space yet. In those
cases, the Prime Directive was used as a general policy to not disrupt
or interfere with their culture when establishing peaceful diplomatic
relations.
Consequences for violating the Prime Directive could range from a
stern reprimand to a demotion, depending on the severity of the
infraction. However, enforcement of these rules -- and interpretations
of the Prime Directive itself -- varied greatly and were at the
discretion of the commanding officer. In many instances, prominent
Starfleet personnel like captains James T. Kirk, Jean-Luc Picard, Kathryn Janeway and Benjamin Sisko willingly broke the Prime Directive but faced no real punishment or consequence for doing so.
However, the Prime Directive is not absolute. Starship captains
have been known to violate it to protect their ships and crews, and
certain Starfleet regulations such as The Omega Directive can even render it null and void in certain circumstances.
Creation and evolution
Creation of the Prime Directive is generally credited to Original Series producer Gene L. Coon.Later writers have suggested that the Prime Directive was influenced by the Vietnam War or designed to show a civilization that had evolved beyond colonialism. This would have been consistent with Coon and Roddenberry's political outlooks, but the notion of science fictional first contact and its possible harms already had a decades-long history by 1966.
Notable on-screen references
The Original Series
The first filmed reference to the Prime Directive occurs in the first season TOS episode "The Return of the Archons" (1966), when Spock begins to caution Captain Kirk of the starship Enterprise
when he proposes to destroy a computer controlling an entire
civilization. Kirk interrupts him after Spock says, "Captain, our Prime
Directive of non-interference" with, "That refers to a living, growing
culture..." Later, Kirk argues the computer into self-destruction and
leaves behind a team of sociologists to help restore the society to a
"human" form.
In the second-season episode "The Apple",
Spock says of Kirk's plan to destroy Vaal, "If we do what it seems we
must, in my opinion, it will be in direct violation of the
non-interference directive."
In the second-season episode "A Piece of the Action", Kirk, briefing Spock and McCoy before beaming down on possible interference 100 years earlier by the Federation ship, the Horizon, Kirk explicitly states, "the contact came before the non-interference directive".
In the second-season episode "A Private Little War", two different factions on a planet were at war with each other and it is discovered that the Klingons
were furnishing one faction with advanced weapons. Kirk responded by
arming the other faction with the same weapons. This resulted in an arms race on that world, as a fictionalized parallel to the then-current Cold War arms race, in which the United States often armed one side of a dispute and the Soviet Union armed the other.
In a similar storyline on TNG, "Too Short a Season",
a Starfleet admiral admits he interpreted the Prime Directive to mean
equally arming two different factions on a planet, intended to reach a
stalemate, but which resulted in 40 years of war.
In the second-season episode "Patterns of Force," Federation cultural observer and historian John Gill created a regime based on Nazi Germany on a primitive planet in an effort to create a society which combined the high efficiency of a fascistdictatorship
with a more benign philosophy. In doing so, he contaminated the normal
and healthy development of the planet's culture, with disastrous
effects; the regime adopts the same racialsupremacist and genocidal
ideologies of the original. Eventually, this leaves investigating
Starfleet officers with no other option but to arrange the overthrow of
the government in order to mitigate the harm of Gill's interference.
In the second-season episode "The Omega Glory",
after finding out that Captain Tracy may have violated the Prime
Directive, Captain Kirk states, "A starship captain's most solemn oath
is that he will give his life, even his entire crew, rather than violate
the Prime Directive."
In the second-season episode "Bread and Circuses",
the crew discusses that the Prime Directive is in effect, saying, "No
identification of self or mission. No interference with the social
development of said planet. No references to space, or the fact that
there are other worlds, or more advanced civilizations."
The Next Generation
In the Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG) first-season episode "Symbiosis", Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the starship Enterprise-D
states that, "The Prime Directive is not just a set of rules; it is a
philosophy... and a very correct one. History has proven again and again
that whenever mankind interferes with a less developed civilization, no
matter how well-intentioned that interference may be, the results are
invariably disastrous."
In the third season episode "Who Watches the Watchers",
the crew of the Enterprise expose a pre-warp civilization on Mintaka
III to Federation technology. Despite an attempted mind wipe, the
Mintakans remember and now revere Picard as a god. Picard intentionally
breaks the Prime Directive again by beaming one of the Mintakans aboard
the Enterprise and explaining they are on a starship, and not gods,
showing them their world from space and encouraging them to spread the
truth to the others. Eventually, he allowed himself to be shot by an
arrow to prove he was mortal.
In the fourth season episode "The Drumhead", the captain of the Enterprise
is being interrogated by retired Admiral Norah Satie, who says the
Prime Directive is "Starfleet General Order Number One". She claims that
Picard had "violated the Prime Directive a total of nine times since
you took command of the Enterprise". (To this he responds "My reports to
Starfleet document the circumstances in each of those instances".)
In the fourth season episode "First Contact", Commander Riker
goes undercover to scout a pre-warp civilization that is on the verge
of discovering warp technology, preparing to establish diplomatic
relations. When he is captured, Captain Picard and Deanna Troi
make first contact early, but Picard refuses to share Federation
technology with them due to the Prime Directive. After worries of social
upheaval, the alien scientists developing warp travel believe their
society isn't ready for knowledge of extraterrestrial life, and they ask
the Enterprise to leave without announcing their presence to the
public, agreeing to delay developing warp technology until their
culture is ready.
In the seventh season episode "Homeward",
it is said that Starfleet had allowed 60 races to die out rather than
interfere with their fate. However, in the episodes "Homeward" and "Pen Pals", the crew debates the Prime Directive and the saving of civilizations.
Deep Space Nine
In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) first season episode "Captive Pursuit", Commander Sisko
references the Prime Directive as his reason for choosing not to
interfere in a hunt of a member of sentient species from the Gamma
Quadrant that is bred to be hunted. In the end, Sisko does allow Chief O'Brien to assist the hunted being to escape from his captors to continue the hunt.
In the episode "The Circle", the government of the planet Bajor
experiences an internal, civil war-like conflict. Starfleet Commander
Benjamin Sisko's superior orders him to evacuate all Starfleet personnel
from the station, noting, "The Cardassians may involve themselves in other people's civil wars, but we don't."
In the episode "In the Pale Moonlight", Sisko and Garak plant evidence to force the Romulans to enter the Dominion War
under false pretenses, with full knowledge and approval from Starfleet
Command, despite this violating the Prime Directive's edict of not
interfering with other cultures or civilizations. Participation in the
war by the Romulans resulted in massive military and civilian casualties
within Romulan society.
Voyager
In the Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Omega Directive,"
an exception to the Prime Directive was introduced. Starfleet's Omega
Directive authorizes a captain to take any and all means necessary to
destroy Omega particles including interference with any society that
creates them.
In the episode "Infinite Regress", Naomi Wildman informs Seven of Nine that she was familiar with the Prime Directive including all 47 suborders.
In the episode "Natural Law,"
Chakotay and Seven of Nine encounter a primitive culture protected by
an energy barrier that they crash a shuttle into which protects the
culture from the rest of the planet's more advanced inhabitants.
Although the two try to avoid contact, the natives encounter and help an
injured Chakotay and start mimicking the pair and collecting shuttle
debris as jewellery. After Seven manages to use the shuttle's deflector
to lower the barrier, Voyager is able to beam out all of the
loose technology and minimize the Prime Directive violation. However,
this leads to another issue when the other culture on the planet -- who
have achieved spaceflight and openly engaged in friendly relations with Voyager
-- seek to use the downed barrier to explore the previously blocked
portion of their planet and civilize the natives. While such an idea has
its benefits and detractors, Janeway cites the Prime Directive as the
reason for taking down the barrier. In response, the natives knock out Voyager's transporters and actively try to force the crew to leave the deflector behind, forcing Tom Paris to destroy it with the Delta Flyer
instead. However, Seven worries that as her deflector modifications
were already scanned, they may be replicated in time to take down the
barrier again.
In the episode "Endgame"
the Future Admiral Janeway warns the present Captain Janeway against
holding on to the "Prime Directive" when the Future Janeway goes back in
time to change history by having Voyager get back to Earth in only 7
years instead of 23 years.
Enterprise
Filmed between 2001 and 2005, Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT) is a prequel to Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS), set before the implementation of the Prime Directive. The first-season episode "Dear Doctor" sees the ship's doctor Phlox struggle with the ethics of providing a cure to a pre-warp species with a deadly disease. Captain Jonathan Archer
notes that as humanity grapples with their newfound reach, they will
have to develop "a doctrine, something that tells us what we can and
can't do out here, should and shouldn't do."
Additionally, the ENT episodes "Fight or Flight" and "Civilization", make reference to a Vulcan policy of non-interference, a possible model for Starfleet's Prime Directive.
Discovery
In "New Eden", the second episode in season two of Star Trek: Discovery
aired in 2019, the away party is selected and briefed to ensure that
their interactions with humans from pre-warp capable Earth does not
interfere with their development. The regulation is exclusively referred
to as General Order 1. Captain Christopher Pike
later breaks the Prime Directive to reveal the truth to one of the
locals in exchange for a World War III era helmet camera, but the man
promises to keep quiet about it to his people. Commander Michael Burnham
argued to Pike that the helmet camera and the answers it might contain
to solve the mystery, was more important than the Prime Directive, and
that one would have to be sacrificed to uphold the other – and only the
captain could make that choice.
In "Whistlespeak" of season five, the Discovery encounters the Halem'nites, a pre-warp, pre-industrial society that is protected by a Denobulan
weather tower which shields the only habitable part of the planet
against sandstorms and generates rain. The Denobulans had installed the
weather tower and four others like it in secret and masked them as
mountains in order to avoid breaking the Prime Directive. However, the
other four failed and the last one is failing, leading the Halemn'ites
to build a whole religion around them. While Captain Michael Burnham and
Lieutenant Sylvia Tilly at first discreetly infiltrate the locals,
allowing Burnham to repair the tower in secret, Tilly's life is put in
danger when the Halem'nites prepare to sacrifice her as part of a ritual
to bring rain. Burnham expressly chooses to violate the Prime Directive
to save her friend, arguing that Tilly and a local named Ravah should
not suffer a pointless death and, without learning how to properly
maintain the tower themselves, the Halem'nites will eventually go
extinct.
Prodigy
The
villain of the first season, the Diviner, came from the future. In his
original timeline the Vau N'Akat saw the arrival of a Federation ship to
its planet. This divided their society between those who wanted to join
the Federation and those who refused, and the ensuing civil war
destroyed them. The Federation refused to take sides in the civil war.
The Diviner considered it a subtle act of aggression and jumped to the
past, the series' present, to destroy the Federation before it makes
first contact with his people.
In "First Con-tact," a holographic version of Kathryn Janeway informs the young crew of the USS Protostar
of the Prime Directive before they attempt a first contact mission.
However, captain Dal R'El is tricked by his old Ferengi mentor DaiMon
Nandi, resulting in a disastrous first contact. Although the crew
returns what Nandi stole, Janeway furiously berates them as not only was
the Prime Directive broken, but the way that things went down will have
a negative impact on any possible relations that the race that they had
met will have with outsiders going forwards.
In "All the World's a Stage," the crew of the Protostar meet a civilization, the Enderprizians, that experienced massive cultural contamination due to a visit by the USS Enterprise around a hundred years before. According to the locals' history, the Enterprise
detected a danger to the Enderprizians that Ensign David Garrovick
volunteered for a solo mission to address without breaking the Prime
Directive. However, Garrovick crashed and was saved by the locals with
his presence, technology and stories leading to them basing their whole
culture around Starfleet and the Enterprise. One local, Doctor
Boons (named after Leonard McCoy's nickname of Bones), reveals that
Garrovick had told the people about the Prime Directive and that they
weren't ready for the Federation or their technology, but the
Enderprizians saw the Federation and its ideals as something to believe
in. The Protostar's meeting with the Enderprizians is treated as
second contact rather than a Prime Directive violation. In the season
finale, an Enderprizian is seen in a Starfleet class, suggesting that
they ended up making more official contact with Starfleet in the end.
In "Brink," The Doctor mentions that sending the Protostar crew to Solum wouldn't technically violate the Prime Directive or Voyager's
direct orders as the crew are not Starfleet personnel. However, when
Gwyn asks to rescue her father Ilthuran -- the present day version of
the Diviner -- Commander Tysess worries that doing so would be taking
sides in the brewing civil war which the Prime Directive prohibits.
Janeway agrees to allow the rescue, pointing out that nothing prevents
them from granting Ilthuran political asylum,
particularly as he is the best hope for a peaceful resolution to the
conflict. While Janeway states that Starfleet will disavow their actions
if they're caught, she allows Voyager to supply the crew with various technologies for their mission.
In "Touch of Grey," despite Janeway previously declaring that the Protostar crew would be disavowed if they were caught, she personally leads Chakotay, The Doctor and Wesley Crusher
to rescue them. As civil war breaks out on Solum, just like it did in
the future that the Diviner came from, Gwyn asks Janeway for help in
saving her homeworld which would be taking sides and thus violating the
Prime Directive. Rather than staying out of it like the Federation did
in the Diviner's future, Janeway instantly agrees to help, having been
reminded that boldness isn't only for the young.
In "Ouroboros, Part I," Voyager and the Protostar engage Asencia's forces to buy time for the Protostar
crew to enact their plan. While the battle results in the defeat of
Asencia and the favorable end of the civil war, the Federation's direct
role is minimal, limited primarily to Voyager and the Protostar
engaging Asencia's fleet which is in the middle of launching to attack
every major Federation outpost across three quadrants. Like in "Brink,"
the forces sent to the ground who take direct part in Asencia's defeat
are non-Starfleet personnel. In the following episode, Janeway leads
official first contact between the Federation and the Vau N'Akat which
Gwyn had previously tried and failed to establish.
Strange New Worlds
In "Strange New Worlds", the first episode of season one of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Captain Pike reveals the Enterprise
to a society that has reverse engineered a matter-anti-matter reactor
as a weapon after witnessing the Battle near Xahea. However, the
Federation Council could not address how the weapon was created because
the Battle near Xahea was classified information, which prevented them
from charging Pike with violating General Order 1. The Federation
Council is also considering renaming General Order 1 as the Prime
Directive, which Captain Pike says will "never stick".
In "Among the Lotus Eaters," Pike orders the removal of a
radioactive asteroid from the surface of the planet Rigel VII. Spock
argues that they are violating the Prime Directive, but Pike counters
that the asteroid's effects were stunting the growth of the local
civilization and as such, they are merely setting things right rather
than interfering which Spock concedes is a logical argument.
Picard
In "Vox," Geordi La Forge mentions that Starfleet had raised the wrecked saucer section of the USS Enterprise-D off of the surface of Veridian III following the events of Star Trek Generations
in order to avoid breaking the Prime Directive due to the pre-warp
civilization living in the star system. This allowed La Forge the chance
to spend twenty years secretly rebuilding the ship.
Films
In the feature film Star Trek: Insurrection,
Picard violates orders to protect the rights of a planet's population
when he feels an admiral is breaking the Prime Directive.
In the feature film Star Trek Into Darkness,
Captain Kirk violates the prime directive by saving Spock's life while
attempting to stop an active volcano that threatens the native
inhabitants, and then by exposing the Enterprise to those inhabitants. As punishment, Kirk is removed from command of the Enterprise
and demoted to first officer instead. Initially, his punishment was to
be sent back to Starfleet Academy, but Admiral Pike intervened on Kirk's
behalf. The subsequent actions of Khan Noonien Singh lead to Kirk being reinstated soon afterwards.
Out-of-universe criticisms focus on the above problems; that the
Prime Directive is simply a plot device and is manipulated by the
writers. Janet D. Stemwedel
points out a potential conflict between the anti-colonialist intentions
of the Federation and the "ethical project of sharing a universe" which
would require "a kind of reciprocity — even if your technological
attainment is quite different, it means recognizing you are owed the
same moral consideration."
Stemwedel writes, "If your concern is not to change the natural
behavior or development of alien citizens at any cost, your best bet is
to stay at home rather than to explore new worlds." Ars Technica asked lawyers to comment on the Prime Directive and other Star Trek legal issues. Criticism included interpreting the Prime Directive as a product of the Cold War environment in which Roddenberry wrote, as well as indicating that enforcement would be lacking.
Temporal Prime Directive
The "Temporal Prime Directive" is a fictional guideline for time travelers (from the past or future) from interfering in the natural development of a timeline.
In the TNG episode "A Matter of Time", Picard compares the Prime Directive to a possible Temporal Prime Directive:
"Of course, you know of the Prime Directive, which tells
us that we have no right to interfere with the natural evolution of
alien worlds. Now I have sworn to uphold it, but nevertheless I have
disregarded that directive on more than one occasion because I thought
it was the right thing to do. Now, if you are holding on to some
temporal equivalent of that directive, then isn't it possible that you
have an occasion here to make an exception, to help me to choose,
because it's the right thing to do?"
As 31st-century time traveler Daniels revealed to Captain Jonathan Archer in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Cold Front",
as time travel technology became practical, the Temporal Accords were
established sometime before the 31st century, to allow the use of time
travel for the purposes of studying history, while prohibiting the use
of it to alter history.
As revealed in the Star Trek: Discovery episode "Face the Strange," the Temporal Prime Directive is still in effect in the late 32nd century.
The British colonization of the Americas is the history of establishment of control, settlement, and colonization of the continents of the Americas by England, Scotland, and, after 1707, Great Britain.
Colonization efforts began in the late 16th century with failed
attempts by England to establish permanent colonies in the North. The
first of the permanent English colonies in the Americas was established in Jamestown, Virginia,
in 1607. Colonies were established in North America, Central America,
South America, and the Caribbean. Though most British colonies in the
Americas eventually gained independence, some colonies have remained
under Britain's jurisdiction as British Overseas Territories.
The first documented settlement of Europeans in the Americas was established by Norse people around 1000 AD in what is now Newfoundland, called Vinland by the Norse. Later European exploration of North America resumed with Christopher Columbus's 1492 expedition sponsored by Spain. English settlement began almost a century later. Sir Walter Raleigh established the short-lived Roanoke Colony in 1585. The 1607 settlement of the Jamestown colony grew into the Colony of Virginia. Virgineola—settled unintentionally by the shipwreck of the Virginia Company's Sea Venture in 1609, and renamed The Somers Isles—is still known by its older Spanish name, Bermuda. In 1620, a group of mostly Pilgrim
religious separatists established a second permanent colony on the
mainland, on the coast of Massachusetts. Several other English colonies
were established in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries.
With the authorization of a royal charter, the Hudson's Bay Company established the territory of Rupert's Land in the Hudson Bay drainage basin. The English also established or conquered several colonies in the Caribbean, including Barbados and Jamaica.
England captured the Dutch colony of New Netherland in the Anglo-Dutch Wars of the mid-17th century, leaving North America divided amongst the English, Spanish, and French empires. After decades of warring with France, Britain took control of the French colony of Canada and France's territory east of the Mississippi River,
as well as several Caribbean territories, in 1763. Many of the North
American colonies gained independence from Britain through victory in
the American Revolutionary War,
which ended in 1783. Historians refer to the British Empire after 1783
as the "Second British Empire"; this period saw Britain increasingly
focus on Asia and Africa instead of the Americas, and increasingly focus
on the expansion of trade rather than territorial possessions.
Nonetheless, Britain continued to colonize parts of the Americas in the
19th century, taking control of British Columbia and establishing the colonies of the Falkland Islands and British Honduras. Britain also gained control of several colonies, including Trinidad and British Guiana, following the 1815 defeat of France in the Napoleonic Wars.
In the mid-19th century,
Britain began the process of granting self-government to its remaining
colonies in North America. Most of these colonies joined the
Confederation of Canada in the 1860s or 1870s, though Newfoundland would not join Canada until 1949. Canada gained full autonomy following the passage of the Statute of Westminster 1931, though it retained various ties to Britain and still recognizes the British monarch as head of state. Following the onset of the Cold War,
most of the remaining British colonies in the Americas gained
independence between 1962 and 1983. Many of the former British colonies
are part of the Commonwealth of Nations, a political association chiefly consisting of former colonies of the British Empire.
Background: early exploration and colonization of the Americas
By the end of the 16th century, the Iberian Union of Spain and Portugal colonized a significant part of the Americas, but other parts of the Americas had not yet been colonized by European powers
Following the first voyage of Christopher Columbus in 1492, Spain and Portugal established colonies in the New World, beginning the European colonization of the Americas. France and England, the two other major powers of 15th-century Western Europe, employed explorers soon after the return of Columbus's first voyage. In 1497, King Henry VII of England dispatched an expedition led by John Cabot
to explore the coast of North America, but the lack of precious metals
or other riches discouraged both the Spanish and English from
permanently settling in North America during the early 17th century.
Later explorers such as Martin Frobisher and Henry Hudson sailed to the New World in search of a Northwest Passage between the Atlantic Ocean and Asia, but were unable to find a viable route. Europeans established fisheries in the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, and traded metal, glass, and cloth for food and fur, beginning the North American fur trade. During mid-1585 Bernard Drake launched an expedition to Newfoundland
which crippled the Spanish and Portuguese fishing fleets there from
which they never recovered. This would have consequences in terms of
English colonial expansion and settlement.
In the Caribbean Sea, English sailors defied Spanish trade restrictions and preyed on Spanish treasure ships.
The English colonization of America had been based on the English
colonization of Ireland, specifically the Munster Plantation, England's
first colony, using the same tactics as the Plantations of Ireland. Many of the early colonists of North America had their start in colonizing Ireland, including a group known as the West Country Men. When Sir Walter Raleigh landed in Virginia, he compared the Native Americans to the wild Irish. Both Roanoke and Jamestown had been based on the Irish plantation model.
In the late sixteenth century, Protestant England became embroiled in a religious war with Catholic Spain. Seeking to weaken Spain's economic and military power, English privateers such as Francis Drake and Humphrey Gilbert harassed Spanish shipping.
Gilbert proposed the colonization of North America on the Spanish
model, with the goal of creating a profitable English empire that could
also serve as a base for the privateers. After Gilbert's death, Walter Raleigh took up the cause of North American colonization, sponsoring an expedition of 500 men to Roanoke Island. In 1584, the colonists established the first permanent English colony in North America, but the colonists were poorly prepared for life in the New World, and by 1590, the colonists had disappeared.
There are a variety of theories as to what happened to the
colonists there. The most popular theory is that the colonists left in
search of a new area to settle in the Chesapeake, leaving stragglers to
integrate with local Native American tribes. A separate colonization attempt in Newfoundland also failed.
Despite the failure of these early colonies, the English remained
interested in the colonization of North America for economic and
military reasons.
Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America, was established during the reign of King James I of England (1603–1625)
In 1606, King James I of England granted charters to both the Plymouth Company and the London Company
for the purpose of establishing permanent settlements in North America.
In 1607, the London Company established a permanent colony at Jamestown on the Chesapeake Bay, but the Plymouth Company's Popham Colony proved short-lived. Approximately 30,000 Algonquian peoples lived in the region at the time.
The colonists at Jamestown faced extreme adversity, and by 1617 there
were only 351 survivors out of the 1700 colonists who had been
transported to Jamestown. After the Virginians discovered the profitability of growing tobacco,
the settlement's population boomed from 400 settlers in 1617 to 1240
settlers in 1622. The London Company was bankrupted in part due to
frequent warring with nearby American Indians, leading the English crown to take direct control of the Colony of Virginia, as Jamestown and its surrounding environs became known.
In 1609, the Sea Venture, flagship of the English London Company, a division of the Virginia Company, bearing Admiral Sir George Somers and the new Lieutenant-Governor for Jamestown, Sir Thomas Gates, was deliberately driven onto the reef off the archipelago of Bermuda to prevent its foundering during a hurricane on the 25th of July. The 150 passengers and crew built two new ships, the Deliverance and Patience
and most departed Bermuda again for Jamestown on 11 May 1610. Two men
remained behind, and were joined by a third after the Patience returned
again, then departed for England (it had been meant to return to
Jamestown after gathering more food in Bermuda), ensuring that Bermuda
remained settled, and in the possession of England and the London
Company from 1609 to 1612, when more settlers and the first Lieutenant-Governor
arrived from England following the extension of the Royal Charter of
the London Company to officially add Bermuda to the territory of
Virginia.
The archipelago was officially named Virgineola, though this was soon changed to The Somers Isles, which remains an official name though the archipelago had already long been infamous as Bermuda,
and the older Spanish name has resisted replacement. The
Lieutenant-Governor and settlers who arrived in 1612 briefly settled on
Smith's Island, where the three left behind by the Sea Venture were
thriving, before moving to St. George's Island where they established the town of New London, which was soon renamed to St. George's Town (the first actual town successfully established by the English in the New World as Jamestown was really James Fort, a rudimentary defensive structure, in 1612).
Bermuda was soon more populous, self-sufficient and prosperous than Jamestown and a second company, the Company of the City of London for the Plantacion of The Somers Isles (better known as The Somers Isles Company)
was spun-off from the London Company in 1615, and continued to
administer Bermuda after the London Company's Royal Charter was revoked
in 1624 (The Somers Isles Company's Royal Charter was similarly revoked
in 1684). Bermuda pioneered tobacco cultivation as the engine for its
economic growth, but as Virginia's tobacco agriculture outstripped it in
the 1620s, and new colonies in the West Indies also emulated its
tobacco industry, the price of Bermudian tobacco fell and the colony
became unprofitable for many of the company's shareholders, who mostly
had remained in England while managers or tenants farmed their land in
Bermuda with the labour of indentured servants. Bermuda's House of Assembly held its first session in 1620 (Virginia's House of Burgesses having held its first session in 1619), but with no landowners resident in Bermuda there was consequently no property qualification, unlike the case with the House of Commons.
As the bottom fell out of tobacco, many absentee shareholders (or Adventurers)
sold their shares to the occupying managers or tenants, with the
agricultural industry quickly shifting towards family farms that grew
subsistence crops instead of tobacco. Bermudians soon found they could
sell their excess foodstuffs in the West Indies where colonies like
Barbados grew tobacco to the exclusion of subsistence crops. As the
company's magazine ship would not carry their food exports to the West
Indies, Bermudians began to build their own ships from Bermuda cedar, developing the speedy and nimble Bermuda sloop and the Bermuda rig.
Between the late 1610s and the American Revolution, the British
shipped an estimated 50,000 to 120,000 convicts to their American
colonies.
Meanwhile, the Council for New England sponsored several colonization projects, including a colony established by a group of English Puritans, known today as the Pilgrims. The Puritans embraced an intensely emotional form of Calvinist Protestantism and sought independence from the Church of England. In 1620, the Mayflower transported the Pilgrims across the Atlantic, and the Pilgrims established Plymouth Colony on Cape Cod.
The Pilgrims endured an extremely hard first winter, with roughly fifty
of the one hundred colonists dying. In 1621, Plymouth Colony was able
to establish an alliance with the nearby Wampanoag
tribe, which helped the Plymouth Colony adopt effective agricultural
practices and engaged in the trade of fur and other materials. Farther north, the English also established Newfoundland Colony in 1610, which primarily focused on cod fishing.
The Caribbean would provide some of England's most important and lucrative colonies, but not before several attempts at colonization failed. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits. Colonies in St Lucia (1605) and Grenada (1609) also rapidly folded. Encouraged by the success of Virginia, in 1627 King Charles I granted a charter to the Barbados Company for the settlement of the uninhabited Caribbean island of Barbados. Early settlers failed in their attempts to cultivate tobacco, but found great success in growing sugar.
The success of colonization efforts in Barbados encouraged the
establishment of more Caribbean colonies, and by 1660 England had
established Caribbean sugar colonies in St. Kitts, Antigua, Nevis, and Montserrat, English colonization of the Bahamas began in 1648 after a Puritan group known as the Eleutheran Adventurers established a colony on the island of Eleuthera. England established another sugar colony in 1655 following the successful invasion of Jamaica during the Anglo-Spanish War. Spain acknowledged English possession of Jamaica and the Caiman Islands in the 1670 Treaty of Madrid. England captured Tortola from the Dutch in 1670, and subsequently took possession of the nearby islands of Anegada and Virgin Gorda; these islands would later form the British Virgin Islands.
During the 17th century, the sugar colonies adopted the system of sugar plantations successfully used by the Portuguese in Brazil, which depended on slave labour. The English government valued the economic importance of these islands over that of New England.
Until the abolition of its slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible
for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas, a
third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic. Many of the slaves were captured by the Royal African Company in West Africa, though others came from Madagascar. These slaves soon came to form the majority of the population in Caribbean colonies like Barbados and Jamaica, where strict slave codes were established partly to deter slave rebellions.
Following the success of the Jamestown and Plymouth Colonies, several
more English groups established colonies in the region that became
known as New England. In 1629, another group of Puritans led by John Winthrop established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and by 1635 roughly ten thousand English settlers lived in the region between the Connecticut River and the Kennebec River. After defeating the Pequot in the Pequot War, Puritan settlers established the Connecticut Colony in the region the Pequots had formerly controlled. The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was founded by Roger Williams, a Puritan leader who was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony after he advocated for a formal split with the Church of England. As New England was a relatively cold and infertile region, the New England Colonies relied on fishing and long-distance trade to sustain the economy.
In 1632, Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore founded the Province of Maryland to the north of Virginia. Maryland and Virginia became known as the Chesapeake Colonies, and experienced similar immigration and economic activities.
Though Baltimore and his descendants intended for the colony to be a
refuge for Catholics, it attracted mostly Protestant immigrants, many of
whom scorned the Calvert family's policy of religious toleration. In the mid-17th century, the Chesapeake Colonies, inspired by the success of slavery in Barbados, began the mass importation of African slaves. Though many early slaves eventually gained their freedom, after 1662 Virginia adopted policies that passed enslaved status from mother to child and granted slave owners near-total domination of their human property.
640 miles (1,030 km) East-South-East of Cape Hatteras,
in the Virginia Company's other former settlement, the Somers Isles,
alias the Islands of Bermuda, where the spin-off Somers Isles Company
still administered, the company and its shareholders in England only
earned profits from the export of tobacco, placing them increasingly at
odds with Bermudians for whom tobacco had become unprofitable to
cultivate. As only those landowners who could attend the company's
annual meetings in England were permitted to vote on company policy, the
company worked to suppress the developing maritime economy of the
colonists and to force the production of tobacco, which required
unsustainable farming practices as more was required to be produced to
make up for the diminished value.
As many of the class of moneyed businessmen who were adventurers
in the company were aligned to the Parliamentary cause during the English Civil War, Bermuda was one of the colonies that sided with the Crown during the war, being the first to recognise Charles II after the execution of his father. With control of their Assembly and the militia and volunteer coastal artillery,
the Royalist majority deposed the company-appointed Governor (by the
1630s, the company had ceased sending Governors to Bermuda and had
instead appointed a succession of prominent Bermudians to the role,
including religious Independent and Parliamentarian William Sayle)
by force of arms and elected John Trimingham to replace him. Many of
Bermuda's religious Independents, who had sided with Parliament, were
forced into exile. Although some of the newer continental colonies
settled largely by anti-Episcopalian Protestants sided with Parliament
during the war, Virginia and other colonies like Bermuda supported the
Crown and were subjected to the measures laid out in An Act for prohibiting Trade with the Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermuda and Antego until Parliament was able to force them to acknowledge its sovereignty.
Bermudian anger at the policies of the Somers Isles Company ultimately saw them take their complaints to the Crown after The Restoration,
leading to the Crown revoking the Royal Charter of the Somers Isles
Company and taking over direct administration of Bermuda in 1684. From
that date, Bermudians abandoned agriculture, diversifying their maritime
industry to occupy many niches of inter-colonial trade between North
America and the West Indies. Bermudians limited landmass and high birth
rate meant that a steady outflow from the colony contributed about
10,000 settlers to other colonies, notably the southern continental
colonies (including Carolina Province, which was settled from Bermuda in 1670), as well as West Indian settlements, including the Providence Island colony in 1631, the Bahamas (settled by Eleutheran Adventurers, Parliament-allied Civil War exiles from Bermuda, under William Sayle in the 1640s), and the seasonal occupation of the Turks Islands from 1681.
Encouraged by the apparent weakness of Spanish rule in Florida, Barbadian planter John Colleton and seven other supporters of Charles II of England established the Province of Carolina in 1663.
Settlers in the Carolina Colony established two main population
centers, with many Virginians settling in the north of the province and
many English Barbadians settling in the southern port city of Charles Town. In 1712, Carolina was divided into the crown colonies of North Carolina and South Carolina. The colonies of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina (as well as the Province of Georgia, which was established in 1732) became known as the Southern Colonies.
Beginning in 1609, Dutch traders had established fur trading posts on the Hudson River, Delaware River, and Connecticut River, ultimately creating the Dutch colony of New Netherland, with a capital at New Amsterdam. In 1657, New Netherland expanded through conquest of New Sweden, a Swedish colony centered in the Delaware Valley. Despite commercial success, New Netherland failed to attract the same level of settlement as the English colonies. In 1664, during a series of wars between the English and Dutch, English soldier Richard Nicolls captured New Netherland. The Dutch briefly regained control of parts of New Netherland in the Third Anglo-Dutch War, but surrendered its claim to the territory in the 1674 Treaty of Westminster, ending the Dutch colonial presence in North America. In 1664, the Duke of York, later known as James II of England, was granted control of the English colonies north of the Delaware River. He created the Province of New York out of the former Dutch territory and renamed New Amsterdam as New York City. He also created the provinces of West Jersey and East Jersey out of former Dutch land situated to the west of New York City, giving the territories to John Berkeley and George Carteret. East Jersey and West Jersey would later be unified as the Province of New Jersey in 1702.
Charles II rewarded William Penn, the son of distinguished Admiral William Penn, with the land situated between Maryland and the Jerseys. Penn named this land the Province of Pennsylvania. Penn was also granted a lease to the Delaware Colony, which gained its own legislature in 1701. A devout Quaker, Penn sought to create a haven of religious toleration in the New World. Pennsylvania attracted Quakers and other settlers from across Europe, and the city of Philadelphia quickly emerged as a thriving port city.
With its fertile and cheap land, Pennsylvania became one of the most
attractive destinations for immigrants in the late 17th century. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware became known as the Middle Colonies.
In 1695, the Parliament of Scotland granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the Isthmus of Panama. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and afflicted by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland—a quarter of Scottish capital
was lost in the enterprise—and ended Scottish hopes of establishing its
own overseas empire. The episode also had major political consequences,
persuading the governments of both England and Scotland of the merits
of a union of countries, rather than just crowns. This occurred in 1707 with the Treaty of Union, establishing the Kingdom of Great Britain.
Expansion and conflict, 1689–1763
Settlement and expansion in North America
After succeeding his brother in 1685, King James II and his lieutenant, Edmund Andros, sought to assert the crown's authority over colonial affairs. James was deposed by the new joint monarchy of William and Mary in the Glorious Revolution, but William and Mary quickly reinstated many of the James's colonial policies, including the mercantilist Navigation Acts and the Board of Trade. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, Plymouth Colony and the Province of Maine were incorporated into the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and New York and the Massachusetts Bay Colony were reorganized as royal colonies, with a governor appointed by the king. Maryland, which had experienced a revolution
against the Calvert family, also became a royal colony, though the
Calverts retained much of their land and revenue in the colony.
Even those colonies that retained their charters or proprietors were
forced to assent to much greater royal control than had existed before
the 1690s.
Between immigration, the importation of slaves, and natural population growth, the colonial population in British North America grew immensely in the 18th century. According to historian Alan Taylor, the population of the Thirteen Colonies (the British North American colonies which would eventually form the United States) stood at 1.5 million in 1750. More than ninety percent of the colonists lived as farmers, though cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Boston flourished.
With the defeat of the Dutch and the imposition of the Navigation Acts,
the British colonies in North America became part of the global British
trading network. The colonists traded foodstuffs, wood, tobacco, and
various other resources for Asian tea, West Indian coffee, and West
Indian sugar, among other items.
Native Americans far from the Atlantic coast supplied the Atlantic
market with beaver fur and deerskins, and sought to preserve their
independence by maintaining a balance of power between the French and
English. By 1770, the economic output of the Thirteen Colonies made up forty percent of the gross domestic product of the British Empire.
Prior to 1660, almost all immigrants to the English colonies of
North America had migrated freely, though most paid for their passage by
becoming indentured servants.
Improved economic conditions and an easing of religious persecution in
Europe made it increasingly difficult to recruit labor to the colonies
in the 17th and 18th centuries. Partly due to this shortage of free
labor, the population of slaves in British North America grew
dramatically between 1680 and 1750; the growth was driven by a mixture
of forced immigration and the reproduction of slaves.
In the Southern Colonies, which relied most heavily on slave labor, the
slaves supported vast plantation economies lorded over by increasingly
wealthy elites.
By 1775, slaves made up one-fifth of the population of the Thirteen
Colonies but less than ten percent of the population of the Middle
Colonies and New England Colonies.
Though a smaller proportion of the English population migrated to
British North America after 1700, the colonies attracted new immigrants
from other European countries, including Catholic settlers from Ireland and Protestant Germans.
As the 18th century progressed, colonists began to settle far from the
Atlantic coast. Pennsylvania, Virginia, Connecticut, and Maryland all
lay claim to the land in the Ohio River valley, and the colonies engaged in a scramble to expand west.
Following the 1684 revocation of the Somers Isles Company's Royal
Charter, seafaring Bermudians established an inter-colonial trade
network, with Charleston, South Carolina
(settled from Bermuda in 1670 under William Sayle, and on the same
latitude as Bermuda, although Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, is the
nearest landfall to Bermuda) forming a continental hub for their trade
(Bermuda itself produced only ships and seamen). The widespread activities and settlement of Bermudians has resulted in many localities named after Bermuda dotting the map of North America.
After the end of the French and Indian War in 1763, North America was dominated by the British and Spanish Empires
The Glorious Revolution and the succession of William III, who had long resisted French hegemony as the Stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, ensured that England and its colonies would come into conflict with the French empire of Louis XIV after 1689. Under the leadership of Samuel de Champlain, the French had established Quebec City on the St Lawrence River in 1608, and it became the center of French colony of Canada. France and England engaged in a proxy war via Native American allies during and after the Nine Years' War, while the powerful Iroquois declared their neutrality. War between France and England continued in Queen Anne's War, the North American component of the larger War of the Spanish Succession. In the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of Spanish Succession, the British won possession of the French territories of Newfoundland and Acadia, the latter of which was renamed Nova Scotia. In the 1730s, James Oglethorpe
proposed that the area south of the Carolinas be colonized to provide a
buffer against Spanish Florida, and he was part of a group of trustees
that were granted temporary proprietorship over the Province of Georgia.
Oglethorpe and his compatriots hoped to establish a utopian colony that
banned slavery, but by 1750 the colony remained sparsely populated, and
Georgia became a crown colony in 1752.
In 1754, the Ohio Company started to build a fort at the confluence of the Allegheny River and the Monongahela River. A larger French force initially chased the Virginians away, but was forced to retreat after the Battle of Jumonville Glen. After reports of the battle reached the French and British capitals, the Seven Years' War broke out in 1756; the North American component of this war is known as the French and Indian War. After the Duke of Newcastle returned to power as Prime Minister in 1757, he and his foreign minister, William Pitt, devoted unprecedented financial resources to the transoceanic conflict. The British won a series of victories after 1758, conquering
much of New France by the end of 1760. Spain entered the war on
France's side in 1762 and promptly lost several American territories to
Britain. The 1763 Treaty of Paris
ended the war, and France surrendered almost all of the portion of New
France to the east of the Mississippi River to the British. France
separately ceded its lands west of the Mississippi River to Spain, and Spain ceded Florida to Britain. With the newly acquired territories, the British created the provinces of East Florida, West Florida, and Quebec, all of which were placed under military governments. In the Caribbean, Britain retained Grenada, St. Vincent, Dominica, and Tobago, but returned control of Martinique, Havana, and other colonial possessions to France or Spain.
The British subjects of North America believed the unwritten British constitution protected their rights and that the governmental system—with the House of Commons, the House of Lords, and the monarch sharing power—found an ideal balance among democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny.
However, the British were saddled with huge debts following the French
and Indian War. As much of the British debt had been generated by the
defense of the colonies, British leaders felt that the colonies should
contribute more funds, and they began imposing taxes such as the Sugar Act of 1764.
Increased British control of the Thirteen Colonies upset the colonists
and upended the notion many colonists held: that they were equal
partners in the British Empire. Meanwhile, seeking to avoid another expensive war with Native Americans, Britain issued the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which restricted settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains. However, it was effectively replaced five years later thanks to the Treaty of Fort Stanwix. The Thirteen Colonies became increasingly divided between Patriots, opposed to parliamentary taxation without representation, and Loyalists,
who supported the king. In the British colonies nearest to the Thirteen
Colonies, however, protests were muted, as most colonists accepted the
new taxes. These provinces had smaller populations, were largely
dependent on the British military, and had less of a tradition of
self-rule.
At the Battles of Lexington and Concord in April 1775, the Patriots repulsed a British force charged with seizing militia arsenals. The Second Continental Congress
assembled in May 1775 and sought to coordinate armed resistance to
Britain. It established an impromptu government that recruited soldiers
and printed its own money. Announcing a permanent break with Britain,
the delegates adopted a Declaration of Independence on 4 July 1776 for the United States of America. The French formed a military alliance with the United States in 1778 following the British defeat at the Battle of Saratoga. Spain joined France in order to regain Gibraltar from Britain. A combined Franco-American operation trapped a British invasion army at Yorktown, Virginia, forcing them to surrender in October 1781.
The surrender shocked Britain. The king wanted to keep fighting, but he
lost control of Parliament and peace negotiations began. In the 1783 Treaty of Paris, Britain ceded all of its North American territory south of the Great Lakes, except for the two Florida colonies, which were ceded to Spain.
With their close ties of blood and trade with the continental
colonies, especially Virginia and South Carolina, Bermudians leaned
towards the rebels during the American War of Independence, supplying them with privateering ships and gunpowder, but the power of the Royal Navy
on the surrounding Atlantic left no possibility of their joining the
rebellion, and they eventually availed themselves of the opportunities
of privateering
against their former kinsmen. Although often mistaken for being in the
West Indies, Bermuda is nearer to Canada (and was initially grouped
within British North America, retaining close links especially with the Nova Scotia and Newfoundland until the continental colonies were confederated into Canada)
than to the West Indies, and the nearest landfall is North Carolina.
Following the independence of the United States, this would make Bermuda
of supreme importance to Britain's strategic control of the region,
including its ability to protect its shipping in the area and its
ability to project its power against the Atlantic seaboard of the United
States, as was to be shown during the American War of 1812.
Having defeated a combined Franco-Spanish naval force at the decisive 1782 Battle of the Saintes, Britain retained control of Gibraltar and all its pre-war Caribbean possessions except for Tobago. Economically, the new nation became a major trading partner of Britain.
The loss of a large portion of British America
defined the transition between the "first" and "second" empires, in
which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the
Pacific, and later Africa. Influenced by the ideas of Adam Smith,
Britain also shifted away from mercantile ideals and began to
prioritize the expansion of trade rather than territorial possessions.
During the nineteenth century, some observers described Britain as
having an "unofficial" empire based on the export of goods and financial
investments around the world, including the newly independent republics
of Latin America. Though this unofficial empire did not require direct
British political control, it often involved the use of gunboat diplomacy and military intervention to protect British investments and ensure the free flow of trade.
From 1793 to 1815, Britain was almost constantly at war, first in the French Revolutionary Wars and then in the Napoleonic Wars. During the wars, Britain took control of many French, Spanish, and Dutch Caribbean colonies.
Tensions between Britain and the United States escalated during the
Napoleonic Wars, as the United States took advantage of its neutrality
to undercut the British embargo on French-controlled ports, and Britain
tried to cut off that American trade with France. The Royal Navy, which
was desperately short of trained seamen and constantly losing deserters
who sought better-paid work under less draconian discipline aboard
American merchant vessels, boarded American ships to search for
deserters, sometimes resulting in the Impressment
of American sailors into the Royal Navy. The United States, at the same
time, coveted the acquisition of Canada, which Britain could ill afford
to lose as its naval and merchant fleets had been constructed largely
from American timber before United States independence, and from
Canadian timber thereafter. Taking advantage of Britain's absorption in
its war with France, the United States began the American War of 1812
with the invasion of the Canadas, but the British Army mounted a
successful defence with minimal regular forces, supported by militia and
native allies, while the Royal Navy blockaded the United States of
America's Atlantic coastline from Bermuda, strangling its merchant
trade, and carried out amphibious raids including the Chesapeake Campaign with its Burning of Washington.
As the United States failed to make any gains before British victory
against France in 1814 freed British forces from Europe to be wielded
against it, and as Britain had no aim in its war with its former
colonies other than to defend its remaining continental territory, the
war ended with the pre-war boundaries reaffirmed by the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, ensuring Canada's future would be separate from that of the United States.
Following the final defeat of French Emperor Napoleon in 1815, Britain gained ownership of Trinidad, Tobago, British Guiana, and Saint Lucia, as well as other territories outside of the Western Hemisphere. The Treaty of 1818 with the United States set a large portion of the Canada–United States border at the 49th parallel and also established a joint U.S.–British occupation of Oregon Country. In the 1846 Oregon Treaty, the United States and Britain agreed to split Oregon Country along the 49th parallel north with the exception of Vancouver Island, which was assigned in its entirety to Britain.
After warring throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
in both Europe and the Americas, the British and French reached a
lasting peace after 1815. Britain would fight only one war (the Crimean War)
against a European power during the remainder of the nineteenth
century, and that war did not lead to territorial changes in the
Americas. However, the British Empire continued to engage in wars such as the First Opium War against China; it also put down rebellions such as the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Canadian Rebellions of 1837–1838, and the Jamaican Morant Bay rebellion of 1865. A strong abolition movement had emerged in the United Kingdom in the late-eighteenth century, and Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807. In the mid-nineteenth century, the economies of the British Caribbean colonies would suffer as a result of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which abolished slavery throughout the British Empire, and the 1846 Sugar Duties Act, which ended preferential tariffs for sugar imports from the Caribbean.
To replace the labor of former slaves, British plantations on Trinidad
and other parts of the Caribbean began to hire indentured servants from India and China.
Establishing the Dominion of Canada
Despite its defeat in the American Revolutionary War and shift towards a new form of imperialism during the nineteenth century,
the British Empire retained numerous colonies in the Americas after
1783. During and after the American Revolutionary War, between 40,000
and 100,000 defeated Loyalists migrated from the United States to Canada. The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784. The Constitutional Act of 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English-speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking)
to defuse tensions between the French and British communities, and
implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Britain,
with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the
sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to
the American Revolution.
The British also expanded their mercantile interests in the North
Pacific. Spain and Britain had become rivals in the area which came to a
head with the Nootka Crisis
in 1789. Both sides mobilised for war, and Spain counted on France for
support but when France refused, Spain had to back down and capitulated
to British terms leading to the Nootka Convention.
The outcome of the crisis was a humiliation for Spain and a triumph for
Britain, for the former had practically renounced all sovereignty on
the North Pacific coast. This opened the way to British expansion in that area, and a number of expeditions took place; firstly a naval expedition led by George Vancouver which explored the inlets around the Pacific NorthWest, particularly around Vancouver Island. On land, expeditions took place hoping for a discovery of a practicable river route to the Pacific for the extension of the North American fur trade (the North West Company). Sir Alexander Mackenzie led the first starting out in 1792, and a year a later he became the first European to reach the Pacific overland north of the Rio Grande reaching the ocean near present-day Bella Coola. This preceded the Lewis and Clark Expedition by twelve years. Shortly thereafter, Mackenzie's companion, John Finlay, founded the first permanent European settlement in British Columbia, Fort St. John. The North West Company sought further explorations firstly by David Thompson, starting in 1797, and later by Simon Fraser. More expedition took place in the early 1800s and pushed into the wilderness territories of the Rocky Mountains and Interior Plateau and all the way to the Strait of Georgia on the Pacific Coast expanding British North America Westward.
In 1815, Lieutenant-General Sir George Prevost was Captain-General
and Governor-in-Chief in and over the Provinces of Upper-Canada,
Lower-Canada, Nova-Scotia, and New~Brunswick, and their several
Dependencies, Vice-Admiral of the same, Lieutenant-General and Commander
of all His Majesty's Forces in the said Provinces of Lower Canada and
Upper-Canada, Nova-Scotia and New-Brunswick, and their several
Dependencies, and in the islands of Newfoundland, Prince Edward, Cape
Breton and the Bermudas, &c. &c. &c. Beneath Prevost, the staff of the British Army in the
Provinces of Nova-Scotia, New-Brunswick, and their Dependencies,
including the Islands of Newfoundland, Cape Breton, Prince Edward and
Bermuda were under the Command of Lieutenant-General Sir John Coape Sherbrooke. Below Sherbrooke, the Bermuda Garrison was under the immediate control of the Lieutenant-Governor of Bermuda, Major-General George Horsford
(although the Lieutenant-Governor of Bermuda was eventually restored to
a full civil Governorship, in his military role as Commander-in-Chief
of Bermuda he remained subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief in Halifax,
and naval and ecclesiastic links between Bermuda the Maritimes
also remained; The military links were severed by Canadian
confederation at the end of the 1860s, which resulted in the removal of
the British Army from Canada and its Commander-in-Chief from Halifax
when the Canadian Government took responsibility for the defence of
Canada; The naval links remained until the Royal Navy withdrew from
Halifax in 1905, handing its dockyard there over to the Royal Canadian Navy; The established Church of England in Bermuda, within which the Governor held office as Ordinary, remained linked to the colony of Newfoundland under the same Bishop until 1919).
In response to the Rebellions of 1837–1838, Britain passed the Act of Union in 1840, which united Upper Canada and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada. Responsible government was first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other British North American colonies. With the passage of the British North America Act, 1867 by the British Parliament, Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia were formed into the confederation of Canada. Rupert's Land (which was divided into Manitoba and the Northwest Territories),
British Columbia, and Prince Edward Island joined Canada by the end of
1873, but Newfoundland would not join Canada until 1949. Like other British dominions such as Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, Canada enjoyed autonomy over its domestic affairs but recognized the British monarch as head of state and cooperated closely with Britain on defense issues. After the passage of the 1931 Statute of Westminster, Canada and other dominions were fully independent of British legislative control; they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent.
United States independence, and the closure of its ports to
British trade, combined with growing peace in the region which reduced
the risk to shipping (resulting in smaller evasive merchantmen, such as
those that Bermudian shipbuilders turned out, losing favour to larger clippers),
and the advent of metal hulls and steam engines, were to slowly
strangle Bermuda's maritime economy, while its newfound importance as a
Royal Navy and British Army base from which the North America and West Indies Station could be controlled meant increasing interest from the British Government in its governance.
Bermuda was grouped with British North America, especially Nova
Scotia and Newfoundland (its closest British neighbours), following
United States Independence. When war with France followed the French Revolution, a Royal Naval Dockyard was established at Bermuda in 1795, which was to alternate with Royal Naval Dockyard, Halifax (Bermuda during the summers and Halifax during the winters) as the Royal Navy headquarters and main base for the River St. Lawrence and Coast of America Station (which was to become the North America Station in 1813, the North America and Lakes of Canada Station in 1816, the North America and Newfoundland Station in 1821, the North America and West Indies Station about 1820, and finally the America and West Indies Station from 1915 to 1956) before becoming the year-round headquarters and main base from about 1818.
The regular army garrison
(established in 1701 but withdrawn in 1784) was re-established in 1794
and grew during the Nineteenth Century to be one of the British Army's
largest, relative to Bermuda's size. The blockade of the Atlantic
seaboard ports of the United States and the Chesapeake Campaign (including the Burning of Washington) were orchestrated from Bermuda during the American War of 1812. Preparations for similar operations were carried out in Bermuda when the Trent Affair nearly brought Britain to war with the United States during the American Civil War
(Bermuda had already been serving as the primary tran-shipment point
for British and European manufactured arms which were smuggled into Confederate ports, especially Charleston, South Carolina, by blockade runners;
cotton was brought out from the same ports by the blockade runners to
be traded at Bermuda for the war materiel), and Bermuda played important
roles (as a naval base, trans-Atlantic convoy forming-up point, as a
connecting point in the Cable and Wireless
Nova Scotia-to-British West Indies submarine telegraph cable, as a
wireless station, and from the 1930s as a site for airbases used as a
staging point for trans-Atlantic flights and for operating
anti-submarine air patrols over the North Atlantic) in the Atlantic
theatre of the First World War and in the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War,
when the already existing Royal Navy, British Army, and Royal Air Force
bases were joined by a Royal Canadian Navy base and naval and air bases
of the allied United States. It remained a vital air and naval base
during the Cold War, with American and Canadian bases existing alongside
the British ones from the Second World War until 1995.
British Honduras and Falkland Islands
In the early 17th century, English sailors had begun cutting logwood in parts of coastal Central America
over which the Spanish exercised little control. By the early 18th
century, a small British settlement had been established on the Belize River,
though the Spanish refused to recognize British control over the region
and frequently evicted British settlers. In the 1783 Treaty of Paris
and the 1786 Convention of London, Spain gave Britain the right to cut logwood and mahogany in the area between the Hondo River and the Belize River, but Spain retained sovereignty over this area. Following the 1850 Clayton–Bulwer Treaty with the United States, Britain agreed to evacuate its settlers from the Bay Islands and the Mosquito Coast, but it retained control of the settlement on the Belize River. In 1862, Britain established the crown colony of the British Honduras at this location.
The British first established a presence on the Falkland Islands in 1765 but were compelled to withdraw for economic reasons related to the American War of Independence in 1774. The islands continued to be used by British sealers and whalers, although the settlement of Port Egmont
was destroyed by the Spanish in 1780. Argentina attempted to establish a
colony in the ruins of the former Spanish settlement of Puerto Soledad, which ended with the British return in 1833. The British governed the uninhabited South Georgia Island, which had been claimed by Captain James Cook in 1775, as a dependency of the Falkland Islands.
Decolonization and overseas territories, 1945–present
The Commonwealth of Nations consists of former territories of the British Empire in the Americas and elsewhere
With the onset of the Cold War
in the late 1940s, the British government began to assemble plans for
the independence of the empire's colonies in Africa, Asia, and the
Americas. British authorities initially planned for a three-decades-long
process in which each colony would develop a self-governing and
democratic parliament, but unrest and fears of Communist infiltration in
the colonies encouraged the British to speed up the move towards
self-governance. Compared to other European empires, which experienced wars of independence such as the Algerian War and the Portuguese Colonial War, the British post-war process of decolonization in the Caribbean was relatively peaceful.
In an attempt to unite its Caribbean colonies, Britain established the West Indies Federation
in 1958. The federation collapsed following the loss of its two largest
members, Jamaica and Trinidad, each of which attained independence in
1962; Trinidad formed a union with Tobago to become the country of Trinidad and Tobago. The eastern Caribbean islands, as well as the Bahamas, gained independence in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Guyana achieved independence in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.
Though many of the Caribbean territories of the British Empire gained independence, Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence. The British Virgin Islands, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Falkland Islands also remain under the jurisdiction of Britain. In 1982, Britain defeated Argentina in the Falklands War, an undeclared war in which Argentina attempted to seize control of the Falkland Islands. In 1983, the British Nationality Act 1981 renamed the existing British colonies as "British dependent territories".
Historically, colonials shared the same citizenship (although Magna Carta had effectively created English citizenship, citizens were still termed subjects of the King of England or English subjects. With the union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland, this was replaced with British subject,
which encompassed citizens throughout the sovereign territory of the
British government, including the colonies) as Britons. Although
historically all British subjects had the right to vote for candidates,
or to themselves stand for election, to the House of Commons (providing that they were male, prior to women's suffrage, and met the property qualification,
when it applied). The British government (as with the Government of the
Kingdom of England before it) has never assigned seats in the House of Commons
to any colony, effectively disenfranchising colonials at the sovereign
level of their government. There has also never been a peer in the House
of Lords representing any colony. Colonials were therefore not
consulted, or required to give their consent, to a series of acts that
passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom between 1968 and 1982,
which were to limit their rights and ultimately change their
citizenship.
When several colonies were elevated before the Second World War to dominion status, collectively forming the old British Commonwealth
(as distinct from the United Kingdom and its dependent colonies), their
citizens remained British subjects, and in theory, any British subject
born anywhere in the world had the same basic right to enter, reside,
and work in the United Kingdom as a British subject born in the United
Kingdom whose parents were also both British subjects born in the United
Kingdom (although many governmental policies and practices acted to
thwart the free exercise of these right by various demographic groups of
colonials, including Greek Cypriots).
When the dominions and an increasing number of colonies began
choosing complete independence from the United Kingdom after the Second
World War, the Commonwealth was transformed into a community of
independent nations, each recognising the British monarch as their own
head of state (creating separate monarchies with the same person
occupying all of the separate Thrones; the exception being republican
India). British subject was replaced by the British Nationality Act 1948 with citizen of the United Kingdom and colonies
for the residents of the United Kingdom and its colonies, as well as
the Crown dependencies. however, as it was desired to retain free
movement for all Commonwealth citizens throughout the Commonwealth, British subject
was retained as a blanket nationality shared by citizens of the United
Kingdom and colonies as well as the citizens of the various other
Commonwealth realms.
The inflow of coloured people
to the United Kingdom during the 1940s and 1950s from both remaining
colonies and newly independent Commonwealth nations was responded to
with a racist backlash that led to the passing of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962,
which restricted the rights of Commonwealth nationals to enter, reside
and work in the United Kingdom. This act also allowed certain colonials
(primarily ethnic Indians in African colonies) to retain citizenship of
the United Kingdom and colonies if their colonies became independent,
intended as a measure to ensure these persons did not become stateless if they were denied the citizenship of their newly independent nation.
Many ethnic-Indians did find themselves marginalised in newly independent nations (notably Kenya) and relocated to the United Kingdom, in response to which the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968
was rapidly passed, stripping all British subjects (including citizens
of the United Kingdom and colonies) who were not born in the United
Kingdom, and who did not have a citizen of the United Kingdom and
colonies parent born in the United Kingdom or some other qualification
(such as existing residence status), of the rights to freely enter,
reside and work in the United Kingdom.
This was followed by the Immigration Act 1971, which effectively divided citizens of the United Kingdom and colonies
into two types, although their citizenship remained the same: Those
from the United Kingdom itself, who retained the rights of free entry,
abode, and work in the United Kingdom; and those born in the colonies
(or in foreign countries to British colonial parents), from whom those
rights were denied.
The British Nationality Act 1981, which entered into force on 1 January 1983, abolished British subject status, and stripped colonials of their full British citizen of the United Kingdom and colonies, replacing it with British dependent territories citizenship,
which entailed no right of abode or to work anywhere (other categories
with even fewer rights were created at the same time, including British overseas citizen for former citizens of the United Kingdom and colonies born in ex-colonies).
The exceptions were the Gibraltarians (permitted to retain British nationality in order to retain citizenship of the European Union) and the Falkland Islanders, who were permitted to retain the same new British citizenship that became the default citizenship for those from the United Kingdom and the Crown dependencies. As the act was widely understood to have been passed in preparation for the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to the People's Republic of China
(in order to prevent ethnic-Chinese British nationals from migrating to
the United Kingdom), and given the history of neglect and racism those
colonies with sizeable non-European (to use the British government's parlance) populations had endured from the British government since the end of Empire, the application of the act only to those colonies in which the citizenship was changed to British dependent territories citizenship has been perceived as a particularly egregious example of the racism of the British government.
The stripping of birth rights from at least some of the colonial CUKCs in 1968 and 1971, and the change of their citizenships in 1983, actually violated the rights granted them by royal charters at the founding of the colonies. Bermuda (fully The Somers Isles or Islands of Bermuda), by example, had been settled by the London Company (which had been in occupation of the archipelago since the 1609 wreck of the Sea Venture) in 1612, when it received its Third Royal Charter from King James I, amending the boundaries of the First Colony of Virginia
far enough across the Atlantic to include Bermuda. The citizenship
rights guaranteed to settlers by King James I in the original royal
charter of the 10 April 1606, thereby applied to Bermudians:
Alsoe wee doe, for us, our
heires and successors, declare by theise presentes that all and everie
the parsons being our subjects which shall dwell and inhabit within
everie or anie of the saide severall Colonies and plantacions and everie
of theire children which shall happen to be borne within the limitts
and precincts of the said severall Colonies and plantacions shall have
and enjoy all liberties, franchises and immunites within anie of our
other dominions to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding
and borne within this our realme of Englande or anie other of our saide
dominions.
And wee doe for vs our heires and
successors declare by these Pnts, that all and euery persons being our
subjects which shall goe and inhabite wthin the said Somer Ilandes and
every of their children and posterity which shall happen to bee borne
within the limits thereof shall haue and enjoy all libertyes franchesies
and immunities of free denizens and natural subjectes within any of our
dominions to all intents and purposes, as if they had beene abiding and
borne wthin this our Kingdome of England or in any other of our
Dominions
In regards to former CUKCs of Saint Helena, Lord Beaumont of Whitley in the House of Lords debate on the British Overseas Territories Bill on the 10 July 2001, stated:
Citizenship was granted irrevocably
by Charles I. It was taken away, quite wrongly, by Parliament in
surrender to the largely racist opposition to immigration at the time.
Some Conservative Party
backbenchers stated that it was the unpublished intention of the
Conservative British government to return to a single citizenship for
the United Kingdom and all of the remaining territories once Hong Kong
had been handed over to China. Whether this was so will never be known
as by 1997 the Labour Party was in government. The Labour Party had
declared prior to the election that the colonies had been ill-treated by
the British Nationality Act 1981, and it had made a promise to return
to a single citizenship for the United Kingdom and the remaining
territories part of its election manifesto. Other matters took
precedence, however, and this commitment was not acted upon during
Labour's first term in government. The House of Lords, in which many
former colonial governors sat, lost patience and tabled and passed its
own bill, then handed it down to the House of Commons to confirm. As a
result, the British dependent territories were renamed the British overseas territories in 2002 (the term dependent territory
had caused much ire in the former colonies, such as well-heeled Bermuda
that had been largely self-reliant and self-governed for nearly four
centuries, as it implied not only that they were other than British, but that their relationship to Britain and to real British people was both inferior and parasitic).
At the same time, although Labour had promised a return to a
single citizenship for the United Kingdom, Crown dependencies, and all
remaining territories, British dependent territories citizenship, renamed British overseas territories citizenship, remained the default citizenship for the territories, other than the Falkland Islands and Gibraltar (for which British citizenship
is still the default citizenship). The bars to residence and work in
the United Kingdom that had been raised against holders of British dependent territories citizenship by The British Nationality Act 1981 were, however, removed, and British citizenship was made attainable by simply obtaining a second British passport with the citizenship recorded as British citizen (requiring a change to passport legislation as prior to 2002, it had been illegal to possess two British passports).
Prior to 2002, all British passports obtained in a British
dependent territory were of a design modified from those issued in the
United Kingdom, lacking the European Union name on the front
cover, having the name of the specific territorial government noted on
the front cover below "British passport", and having the request on the
inside of the front cover normally issued by the secretary of state on
behalf of the Queen instead issued by the governor of the territory on
behalf of the Queen. Although this design made it easier for United
Kingdom Border Control to distinguish a colonial from a 'real' British
citizen, these passports were issued within the territory to the holder
of any type of British citizenship with the appropriate citizenship
stamped inside. The normal British passports issued in the United
Kingdom and by British consulates in Commonwealth and foreign countries
were similarly issued to holders of any type of British citizenship
with the appropriate citizenship, or citizenships, stamped
inside. From 2002, the thenceforth local governments of the British
overseas territories in which British overseas territories citizenship
was the default citizenship were no longer allowed to issue or replace
any British passport except the type for their own territory only with
British overseas territories citizen recorded inside (and a stamp from
the local government showing the holder has legal status as a local (in
Bermuda, by example, the stamp records "the holder is registered as a
Bermudian"), as neither British dependent territories citizenship nor
British overseas territories citizenship actually entitles the holder to
any more rights in any territory than in the United Kingdom, simply
serving to enable colonials to be distinguished from real British people for the benefit of United Kingdom Border Control.
Since 2002, only the United Kingdom Government has issued normal British passports with the citizenship stamped as British citizen.
Since June 2016, only the Passport Office in the United Kingdom is
permitted to issue any type of British passport. Local governments of
territories can still accept passport applications, but must forward
them to the Passport Office. This means that the territorial pattern of
British passport is no longer available, with all passports issued since
then being of the standard type issued in the United Kingdom, with the
appropriate type of British citizenship recorded inside; a problem for
Bermudians as they have always enjoyed freer entry into the United
States than other British citizens, but the United States had updated
its entry requirements (prior to the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York
City and Washington, D.C., Bermudians did not need a passport to enter
the US, and Americans did not need a passport to enter Bermuda. Since
then, anyone entering the US, including US citizens, must present a
passport) to specify that, in order to be admitted as a Bermudian the
passport must be of the territorial type specific to Bermuda, with the
country code inside being that used for Bermuda as distinct from other
parts of the British Realm, with the citizenship stamped as British dependent territories citizenship or British overseas territories citizenship,
and the stamp from Bermuda Immigration showing the holder has Bermudian
status. From the point of view of Bermuda Immigration, only the stamp
showing the holder has Bermudian status indicates the holder is
Bermudian, and that can be entered into any type of British passport
with any type of British citizenship recorded, so the United States
requirements are more stringent than Bermuda's, and impossible to meet
with any British passport issued to a Bermudian since the end of June
2016.
The eleven inhabited territories are self-governing to varying degrees and are reliant on the UK for foreign relations and defence. Most former British colonies and protectorates are among the 52 member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, a non-political, voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2.2 billion people. Fifteen Commonwealth realms, including Canada and several countries in the Caribbean, voluntarily continue to share the British monarch, King Charles III, as their head of state.
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