When Diplomacy Fails Presents

Britain goes to war

An in-depth examination of the British Empire from the closing stages of the Victorian era

to the opening phases of the First World War and beyond.

Section 2 Background

Part A

The Golden Age

Chapter 3

What would a Victorian statesman had discovered if he had truly wondered to himself

where the empire had come from.

Empire was not something invented by the Victorians. In fact, Britain possessed its so-called

First Empire from the beginning of the 17th century, and had been expanding elsewhere,

most notably next door into Ireland, as early as the mid-12th century. Before it had been Britain, it had been

England, and as England, English kings had once made grand claims on the throne of France. Any fan

of the Hundred Years' War knows that at one point England occupied more of France than the actual French,

and that because of this, claimed jurisdiction

over the French crown. Lessons learned at this early stage were replicated further down the

line in history and up to the present day. Merchant companies in Calais, for example, that

coastal enclave of France, which was the last continental possession that England evacuated,

enjoyed the privilege of royal charters and the granting of monopolies that will later be enjoyed by the East

India Company, the Hudson's Bay Company and the Levant Company, etc.

One of the first Navigation Acts were introduced in 1381, with an aim towards effectively

...