Inglés (Secundaria) Tema 49 PDF

# Inglés (Secundaria), Tema 49 (BOE 1993) ## Ecoem Formación - Curso 2023/2024 ### 49 - CONSTRUCCIÓN Y ADMINISTRACIÓN DEL IMPERIO COLONIAL BRITÁNICO EN LOS SIGLOS XVIII Y XIX. J. CONRAD Y R. KIPLING. - IGST49 ## A. READER ### 1. INTRODUCTION. ### 2. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE...

# Inglés (Secundaria), Tema 49 (BOE 1993) ## Ecoem Formación - Curso 2023/2024 ### 49 - CONSTRUCCIÓN Y ADMINISTRACIÓN DEL IMPERIO COLONIAL BRITÁNICO EN LOS SIGLOS XVIII Y XIX. J. CONRAD Y R. KIPLING. - IGST49 ## A. READER ### 1. INTRODUCTION. ### 2. THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE IN THE 18TH AND 19TH CENTURIES. - 2.1. The Background. - 2.1.1. The Tudors. - 2.1.2. The 17th century. - 2.2. The 18th century. - 2.3. The 19th century and the Second Empire. - 2.3.1. The Second Empire. - 2.3.2. The construction of the Second Empire. ### 3. THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE. - 3.1. Types of colonies. - 3.2. Economic exploitation. - 3.3. The Government of the colonies. ### 4. JOSEPH CONRAD. ### 5. RUDYARD KIPLING. ### 6. DIDACTIC TRANSPOSITION. ### 7. CONCLUSION. ## B. REFERENCES ### 8. LEGISLATIVE REFERENCES. ### 9. BIBLIOGRAPHY. ### 10. WEBLIOGRAPHY. ## C. SUMMARY / CONCEPT MAP ### 11. SAMPLE SUMMARY. ### 12. CONCEPT MAP. ## Construction and Administration Of the British Colonial Empire In the 18th and 19th Centuries. J. Conrad and R. Kipling. ### 1. Introduction. The motives that induce human beings to examine their environment are many. Strong among them are the satisfaction of curiosity, the pursuit of trade, the spread of religion, and the desire for security and political power. At different times and in different places, different motives are dominant. Sometimes one motive inspires the promoters of discovery, and another motive may inspire the individuals who carry out the search. Still other motives draw settlers to the new territory. The major period of European colonization had its origin with the Renaissance, the development of modern science, and the great voyages of discovery. This period began about 1500 and reached its peak in the early 1900s, when the last independent territories of Asia and Africa were parcelled out. Following World War II the strengthening of nationalistic movements opposed to colonialism and the erosion of dominance caused by the modernization of economic systems brought about the decline of the colonial empires. ### 2. The Construction Of the British Empire In the 18th and 19th Centuries. ### 2.1. The Background. Before a detailed discussion of the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries one should try to understand the way in which it began in the previous centuries. The 16th was the period in which Britain was strengthened politically and the 17th was the period of first settlements and the beginning of colonization on a large scale. #### 2.1.1. The Tudors. Although many scholars trace the beginnings of the Empire to the Norman colonization of Ireland, the Tudor period was the actual great age of discovery and the beginning of world expansion. The Tudors stimulated expansion thanks to their interest in the naval industry. In 1495 Henry VII built the first dry dock at Portsmouth. Henry VIII inherited seven warships from his father, which he increased to twenty-four in the early part of his reign. Henry VIII had ships built which had improved sea-worthiness and armaments, and in 1514, the Henry Grace a Dieu, the largest warship in the world, was launched. It was the first ship with heavy guns, and this led to an end of archers firing on ships and hand to hand fighting, and so developed a new technique of sea warfare. In the same year Trinity House was inaugurated to develop navigational aids such as lighthouses, buoys and beacons, the latter being used to signal the invasion of the Spanish Armada in 1588. In 1546, Henry established the Navy Board, which remained almost unchanged for 300 years, and created the Office of Admiralty, which set up the administrative machinery for the control of the fleet. For his achievements Henry VIII was known as the "Father of the English Navy". Under Elizabeth I (1533-1603) (reigned from 1558): - The English encouraged attack and destruction of Spanish ships bringing gold, silver, etc. from the newly discovered continent of America (since Spain refused to share the monopoly of the trade with their colonies). - The monarch encouraged traders to settle abroad and create colonies. In the 1580s Sir Walter Raleigh then organised several voyages of discovery along the Atlantic seaboard of North America, but an attempt to colonise a region named Virginia (after the unmarried "Virgin" Queen) was unsuccessful. He also set off in search of the legendary El Dorado (1595 and 1616). Sir John Hawkins (1532-1595), on the other hand, started the slave trade and made the first voyage with a slave cargo in 1562, so that by 1650 slavery had become an important trade for England, which sold these slaves to the Spanish colonies. He largely reconstructed the Elizabethan navy; and he died on an expedition to raid the Spanish West Indies. - Chartered companies were established. The "charter" gave a company the right to all the business in its particular trade or region, and the company had to give some of its profits to the Crown. Some of the chartered companies created at this time were: the Levant Company (trade with the Ottoman Empire), the Africa Company (1588) (trade with slaves) and the East India_Company (1600). The latter was created to trade with India, which had become very important since spices were needed to make the winter-salted meat tastier. The East India Company began to operate in India and Persia, where they carried out wars against the Dutch, who had controlled the spice trade till then. - Ireland became England's first important colony: although under English influence since the 12th century, it was Henry VIII who had forced the Irish to recognise him as king of Ireland after centuries of a diminishing role for the English monarch, and to accept the English Reformation; Elizabeth I also took lands from the Irish and sold them to English and Scottish merchants. #### 2.1.2. The 17th Century. Commercial interests, rather than territorial ambition, dictated the growth of the early Empire: England in the 16th century was a poor country, lacking the wealth of Portugal and Spain and so unlike the Spaniards and Portuguese, the English were neither missionaries nor colonists. When the English put to sea it was to seek immediate profits. These policies were based on mercantilism, a theory according to which the national wealth of a country was measured by the amount of gold and silver a nation possessed. The colonies thus existed for the economic benefit of the mother country: the mother nation would draw raw material from its possessions and sell them finished goods. This trade should be monopolistic in order to assure the wealth of the country. To this end legislation was designed in the 17th century to give English shipping a monopoly in the colonial trade: the Navigation Acts. That of 1650 forbade foreign ships to trade in England's colonies. The Navigation Act of 1651 established that colonial goods must be carried in English or colonial ships, where at least 75% of the crew were to be English. From 1660 certain colonial goods were to be shipped only to England. From 1663 colonists were bound to buy most of the European goods they needed in England. Jamestown was the first American settlement (1602). Then Puritans arrived in Plymouth in 1620, and after them, Catholics founded Maryland (which was owned by the Calvert brothers) in 1634. Attacks were carried out against New Holland (a Dutch colony, and now New York, New Jersey and Delaware) from 1616, which finally became English by the Treaty of Westminster (1667). South Carolina and Rupertsland were occupied in 1670, and William Penn founded Philadelphia and the Quaker colony in Pennsylvania in 1670. During the 17th century the English fought against the Dutch for competition in trade; later on, when Britain had achieved the trade position it wanted, peace was agreed. When William of Orange (Mary's husband and James II's brother-in-law) became king of England (1689), he brought Britain into the Dutch struggle with the French. It was also during the 17th century that some important trade bases were established on the way to and in India: Hormuz (the Persian Gulf, taken from the Portuguese in 1622), Madras (1639), Bombay (1661) and Calcutta (1696). ### 2.2. The 18th Century. A number of wars in this century were the main source of gains for the increase in size of the British Empire. Under the Treaty of Utrecht (signed in 1713 to end the War of Spanish Succession) France ceded to Britain much of its North American territory, including Hudson Bay, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland. In the partition of the Spanish Empire, Britain received Gibraltar and Minorca. Britain also had from then on the monopoly of the slave trade with the Spanish American colonies. Britain was thus established as the strongest naval power in the world. The conflicts between the French and the English trade companies in India and the colonial rivalry between these two powers in North America resulted in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763). Around 400,000 British colonists were putting pressure on French territories in North America where they wanted to settle. It was during this war that Britain gained control over India. The Battle of Plassey (1757), where victory gave the British control over Bengal and assured them supremacy, was thus decisive. French expansion in India was thus finished. Further wars against the Indian states helped the British take more and more of the interior, where revenue was then raised to consolidate power and for the conquest of other regions. At the beginning the East India Company did not interfere in Indian politics. Its interest was only trade. Competition with France resulted in direct efforts to control Indian politics, either by alliance or by the conquest of Indian princely states. Around 1760 the British conquered all the French bases in Senegal and Gambia, thus establishing their first bases in West Africa. The Seven Years' War ended with the Treaty of Paris (1763), whereby Britain made substantial gains, receiving Quebec, Cape Breton Island, Grenada, St Vincent, Dominica, Tobago, Senegal, Florida, and Minorca. Britain was thus established as the world's leading colonial power. Nevertheless, the Independence of the American colonies in 1776 (see below) is also considered a consequence of the expenses brought about by the war. Australia was another colony gained in the 18th century, although the means was not a war but a discovery. In 1768 Captain James Cook took members of the Royal Society on an expedition to Tahiti. On the return journey he mapped the coasts of New Zealand, explored the southeast coast of Australia, and navigated the Great Barrier Reef. He took possession of Australia on behalf of Britain in 1770. New South Wales was founded in 1788 as a British penal settlement. Initially administered as a huge prison, the colony suffered much disruption in its first years and failed to become self-supporting. In the early 19th century both immigration of free settlers and exploration were encouraged. However, not everything was gains in the 18th century. The attempt of George III and his minister Lord North to coerce the colonists in North America into paying special taxes to Britain roused them to resistance, which came to a head in the American Revolution 1775-81 and led to the creation of the United States of America from the 13 English colonies then lost. It meant the loss of an important part of the British Empire, which will have to turn to the East and to Africa in order to compensate for the loss of these territories. Constitutional development in Canada started with an act of 1791 which set up Lower Canada (Quebec), mainly French-speaking, and Upper Canada (Ontario), mainly English-speaking. ### 2.3. The 19th Century and the Second Empire. #### 2.3.1. The Second Empire. One result of the loss of the American colonies was a move to tighten the reins of empire elsewhere, notably in Canada, Ireland, and, more slowly, in the Caribbean. Another, however, was a rise in enthusiasm for parliamentary reform, religious liberalisation and reform of prisons and lunatic asylums; for virtually anything, in fact, which might prevent a similar humiliation in the future. While in the 17th and 18th centuries we find commercial colonialism, the 19th century was characterised by Imperialism based on free trade, especially in the last 30 years of the century. Some authors use the term Second Empire to reflect these changes. Characterised by the economic exploitation of people and resources, it was different from the commercial colonialism of the 17th and 18th c. in several ways. Firstly, the empire was mainly concentrated in Africa, Asia and the Pacific (whereas America had been the centre of the empire until the end of the 18th c.). Secondly, if the former colonies had become settlements forming new societies, now the colonies were mostly occupied territories where a European minority controlled the politics and where the native population remained alienated. And thirdly, there was a faster rhythm of occupation than before, in such a way that the race for conquering territories led to wars between the European powers, which would finally lead to the First World War. There were different but complementary reasons which explain the imperial policies the European countries followed during the 19th c. and which can easily be applied to Britain. The first one has to do with the consequences of the Industrial Revolution: on the one hand, the growth of capital resulting from the industrial growth brought with it the need to find new places in which to invest the surplus of money of the industries (financial imperialism), whereas, as the same time, that same growth meant the need to find new markets for the products that were being produced (commercial imperialism) and the need for more raw material to produce those goods. A further consequence of the Industrial Revolution was population growth in Europe (the life expectancy was growing during the 19th c.). That demographic pressure, helped by the development of transportation (steamboats and railways, which facilitated and cut the time of the journeys) resulted in the emigration of British people to the colonies, where they could find new opportunities. These economic reasons were supported by a nationalistic feeling which was in part based on the Neo-Darwinist theories about the supremacy of the white race as the fittest race. Along these lines were the speeches made by Chamberlain in 1895-96, where he stated the supremacy of the British race ("I think the British race is the greatest imperial race the world has known"). This racial supremacy was also related to a cultural superiority (defended, among others, by Junt at the London Anthropological Society in 1863): it was the duty of the white man to spread culture and civilisation among the "inferior" peoples, which is precisely what Kipling was to call "the white man's burden". #### 2.3.2. The Construction Of the Second Empire. In Australia, discovery of rich pastures behind the Blue Mountains prompted cultivation of the hinterland. By mid-century, most of the grazing land in eastern Australia had been occupied. Tasmania was settled in 1803, and new settlements were made in what was to be Queensland (1824), in Western Australia (1829), and in South Australia (1836). During the 1840s demands for self-government arose. These were reinforced after 1851 by gold rushes, which rapidly trebled Australia's population and promoted the swift advance of its economy. By 1860 all Australian colonies, except Western Australia, had been granted responsible government. The disadvantages of having five governments within what was in effect one economy was aggravated by the erection of tariffs barriers by the colonial governments against each other. Accordingly, a federation was proposed, much debated, and finally implemented in 1901, when Australia became an independent dominion of the British Empire. New Zealand began to be colonised after the foundation of New South Wales (1788), but only with the formation of the New Zealand Company (1839) under the auspices of Edward Gibbon Wakefield did regular colonisation begin. Formal annexation followed the treaty of Waitangi (1840) signed with the Maori inhabitants of the islands. Representative institutions were established in New Zealand in 1852, and ministerial responsibility was granted four years later. The colony's early years were troubled by the Maori Wars, which resulted in the decimation of the Maoris and the breakdown of their tribal structure. The economy of New Zealand was greatly boosted by the discovery of gold in 1861 and the subsequent gold rushes. It became a dominion in 1907. In India, the Government of India Act (1858), which followed the Indian mutiny (or Sepoy Revolt) (1856-7), finally transferred responsibility for the administration of India from the East India Company to the crown. Responsibility for India lay with the Secretary of State for India, advised by a Council of India; day-to-day administration was monitored by the India Office. However, control was largely in the hands of the viceroy, who was assisted by the Indian Civil Service. In 1858 the British committed themselves to the policies of support for the Indian princes and to non-interference in religious matters; they also promised racial equality, but the British Raj was, on the contrary, characterised in the 19th c. by the maintenance of racial barriers between the British ruling elite and the Indians, although the latter could participate in the administration. Economically, agriculture was developed and industrialisation begun, and by 1914 some 56,326 km of railway had been built, linking the rural areas with the towns. By 1886 Burma had been annexed to British India. Under Lord Curzon, viceroy from 1899 to 1905, the government of India reached the height of its indifference to local opinion with the partition of Bengal. As a result, many Indians turned to the Indian National Congress (founded 1885), which by 1906 was calling for self-government. Queen Victoria had been proclaimed Empress of India in 1877. The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was a rebellion against British rule by a large part of the Bengal army in India. It is also called the Sepoy Revolt because Indian troops in the British controlled army were called sepoys. The mutiny, which was confined to the north, was the most serious threat to British rule in India in the 19th century. From India, the British spread the Empire through the continent in the 19th c. (Burma in 1886, Malaysia, Singapore in 1820, and Afghanistan in 1878 and 1919). Britain sold opium and bought silk and tea from China. This led to the first and second Opium Wars (1839-42 and 1856-1858), when the Chinese government tried to suppress the smuggling of opium, as addiction was devastating the Chinese population and destroying the Chinese economy. The first war ended with the treaty of Nanking (1842), whereby Hong Kong was ceded to Britain and which opened five ports to British traders (Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Nangpo and Shanghai). More ports were opened after the second war. The weakness of the Chinese Empire led to its partition between the European powers (1885-1911): Britain took the south and the Yang-Tse). An event which was decisive for this partition was the Boxer rising of 1899, a nationalistic reaction against the intrusion of European powers. Attacks by the Boxers (members of the secret Society of Harmonious Fists) upon churches and Chinese Christians was followed by the siege of foreign legations in Peking. It was suppressed with the aid of the USA and Japan, which emerged as imperial powers at the end of the 19th c. However, Africa is the clearest example of the new type of colonialism. The empire in Africa started as slave trading depots in Ghana (Gold Coast) and other parts of the West African coast. Then when Britain ended its slave trade at the beginning of the 19th century there was a need for bases for the naval patrols trying to prevent other countries carrying on the slave trade. In Sierra Leone there was also a base to land freed ex-slaves. Then there were bases for "legitimate" trade. These grew from Lagos in Nigeria (a former Portuguese base), Accra in Ghana and Gambia. In many cases the coastal base was declared a Colony (sovereign British territory), and the interior lands were declared a Protectorate. In the 1890s British troops pushed inland until they reached the borders of the French territories. The Berlin Conference (1884) on Colonial matters carved up Africa and gave each of the European powers their own sections. Another important area of Africa was the southern tip of the continent. At the beginning of the 19th c. Britain had the Cape (ceded by the Dutch in 1814) and the Golden Coast, and its trade companies operated in Western and Eastern Africa. Throughout the century explorers went mainly to the basins of the Nile and the Niger: Mungo Park (1795 and 1805), Dixon Denham and Hugh Clapperton, John and Richard Lander, David Livingstone (who charted the map of central African in his three journeys between 1853 and 1873). These explorers were supported by societies like the African Association and the Royal Geographical Society, and they were encouraged and supported for economic reasons too, since they could map and explore lands which could later be used for colonisation and trade. The Cape was ceded by the Dutch in 1814. Dissatisfied with British policies, thousands of Boers (settlers of Dutch descent) made the great trek northwards in the 1830s, away from British authority. They established republics in the Transvaal, and the Orange Free State. A first Boer War was fought 1880/81 in order to maintain their independence after Britain had annexed Transvaal in 1877. These disadvantaged communities were transformed by the discovery of diamonds in 1867 in Griqualand West and the discovery of gold in 1886 in the Transvaal. The gold mines were developed largely with British capital but the so-called uitlanders (foreigners, mostly British) were not given political rights by the Afrikaners. The British won the consequent second Boer War (1899-1902) and in 1910 the four provinces (Natal, Cape of Good Hope, Transvaal, and the Orange Free State) were united in the self-governing Union of South Africa, a British dominion. British strategic interest in Egypt was attracted in 1869 when the Suez Canal was officially opened. Sailing times from London to Bombay were dramatically cut. British maps and ideas of the world had to be radically altered. The fact that the canal was controlled by the native Egyptian rulers and the French government was initially a serious concern to the British. The first opportunity to pull the canal away from the French was in 1875 when it became obvious that the Egyptian ruler Khedive had got himself into serious economic difficulties. The only way he could stave off creditors was by raising a large amount of money. It was at this point that Disraeli was able to step in and offer to buy the Khedive's shares in the Suez Canal Company. Overnight, the British went from being a minority shareholder to having a controlling interest. In the 1880s the Egyptians rose against the foreign control of the Canal but they lost the war against troops from various European countries led by the British, who as a result remained in control of Egypt and the Suez Canal for the rest of the 19th century. Britain had the project of connecting North and South Africa, from the Cape to Cairo, with railroads in order to control the Indian Ocean. The project did not succeed, but was one of the reasons for the Berlin conference (1884-85), where agreements were reached for the partition of Africa among the European powers. Britain ended up with territories in East, West and Southern Africa. British farmers and business men settled in some of them e.g. Kenya, Rhodesia and South Africa. ### 3. The Administration Of The British Empire. ### 3.1. Types Of Colonies. The early growth of the Empire was not laid down in any coordinated plan and it was held together and administered by whatever means seemed most expedient for a particular time and place. Pirates, traders, soldiers, explorers, financial speculators, missionaries, convicts, and refugees all played a part in creating the British Empire. Private individuals or companies often provided the initial impetus for the exploration and subsequent exploitation of foreign lands, frequently in the face of government reluctance, but, increasingly, British governments were drawn in to maintain them. One of the early pioneers of British settlement in North America was William Penn, who gave his name to Pennsylvania. The main types of colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries were proprietary and royal. - **Proprietary colonies** - they were grants of land in the form of a charter, or a license to rule, for individuals, groups or companies. They were used to settle areas rapidly with British subjects at the proprietors' expense during the costly settlement years. Also, they could be used by the Crown to repay a debt to, or bestow a favour upon, a highly placed person. In the case of individual or group proprietors, the land was titled in the proprietors' name, not the king's. The proprietors could appoint all officials; create courts, hear appeals, and pardon offenders; make laws and issue decrees; raise and command militia; and establish churches, ports, and towns. Proprietors had the opportunity to recoup their investment by collecting quitrents -annual land fees- from the settlers who had purchased land within these colonies. These vast powers were encapsulated in the Bishop of Durham clause, so-called because they were reflective of powers granted to the Lord Bishop of Durham when Scots invaders threatened his northern lands in fourteenth-century England. Proprietary colonies were the predominant form of colony in the seventeenth century, when the Carolinas, the Jerseys, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania were handed down through hereditary proprietorship. - **A chartered company** is a trading corporation enjoying certain rights and privileges, and bound by certain obligations under a special charter granted to it by the sovereign authority of the state, such charter defining and limiting those rights, privileges and obligations, and the localities in which they are to be exercised. It was in the age of Elizabeth and the early Stuarts that the chartered company, in the modern sense of the term, began to rise. The discovery of the New World, and the opening up of fresh trading routes to the Indies, gave an extraordinary impulse to shipping, commerce and industrial enterprise throughout western Europe. The English, French and Dutch governments were ready to assist trade by the granting of charters to trading associations. The chartered companies which were formed during this period for trade with the Indies and the New World have had a more wide-reaching influence in history. The East India Company and the Hudson's Bay Company are the most famous. - **Royal colonies** (also known as Crown colonies) were established in North America by England, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The colonies were controlled by the king of the sovereign nation, who named a governor to each colony and, in English colonies, a council to assist him. The Crown was also responsible for appointing colonial judges, usually for life, though by 1760 they could be removed from office at will. The Crown controlled all unsold public lands, and the royal governor retained the power to disperse those lands. As a representative of the Crown in the colonies, the governor-who also could be removed at will by the king-and the council derived their authority from two key documents, the colonial commission and the set of royal instructions. In royal colonies, as in charter and proprietary governments, the assembly was popularly elected according to varying definitions of franchise. Though the governor and his council theoretically controlled appropriations and expenditures, in reality colonial assemblies undermined that power over time. By 1720, most colonial assemblies had wrested from the governor the power to initiate legislation, including laws governing taxation and the management of colonial revenue. In theory, and according to royal instructions, laws passed by colonial assemblies had to be approved by both the governor and the Board of Trade in England. In practice, however, the vagaries of both distance and an inefficient hierarchy meant that years could pass before laws to which England objected could be repealed. Colonial assemblies learned rapidly how to articulate and defend their own interests. At the beginning of the 19th century royal colonies were the main form of administering the Empire, although two new forms became useful: - **Protectorates** - they had their own government but also an imperial governor who was responsible for the questions of defence and foreign policy (thus controlled by Britain). This was the case in Egypt, Malaysia and Sierra Leone, and it was usually followed in those countries which already had their own governments before the British set up the colony. - **Dominions**- the concept of self-government for some of the colonies was first formulated in Lord Durham's Report on the Affairs of British North America 1839 which recommended that responsible government (the acceptance by governors of the advice of local ministers) should be granted to Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec). This pattern was subsequently applied to the other Canadian provinces and to the Australian colonies which received a form of self- government by 1859, except for Western Australia (1890). New Zealand obtained responsible government in 1856 and the Cape colony in 1872, followed by Natal 1893. A further intermediate form of government, dominion status, was devised in the late 19th and early 20th century at a series of Colonial Conferences (renamed Imperial Conferences 1907). Canada became a dominion 1867, Australia 1901, New Zealand 1907, and South Africa by 1910. These four self-governing countries were known as Dominions within the British Empire. Their meetings with the British government were the basis for the idea of the Commonwealth of Nations. Dominion status was very inexactly defined until the Statute of Westminster 1931 established it as synonymous with complete independence. ### 3.2. Economic Exploitation. Slavery was an unavoidable and, some might have deemed, necessary adjunct of empire in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The slave systems in Europe had their origins in the sixteenth century and in most cases enjoyed the full support and protection of the state. At the heart of this system, of course, was the transatlantic slave trade. Though the British entered the trade relatively late, they quickly came to dominate it. Slave exports rose from 59,000 in 1662-70 to 125,000 in 1700-9 and 273,300 in 1750-9. The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed further expansion. During the 1780s and 1790s, the British exported a total of 656,000 slaves. Overall, between 1662 and 1807 British Empire ships carried approximately 3.4 million slaves from Africa to America, that is, about 50 percent of all slave exports during this period. At the height of the slave trade, Britain exported more slaves than any other nation, her slave colonies produced vast quantities of tropical goods, and the country as a whole grew rich on the profits of African slavery. The bulk of these slaves were shipped into the Caribbean, which proved something of a graveyard for Africans and their descendants; a smaller number (probably somewhere around 650,000) were imported into the North American colonies. In each case, slaves were vital to the economic success of plantation complexes that produced large quantities of staples (sugar, rice, tobacco, indigo) for export. The value of this trade to the British is indisputable. To give one example, sugar imports from the British Caribbean to Great Britain rose from approximately 41,000 tons in ca. 1748 to 165,000 tons in ca. 1815; in fact, between 1750 and 1825 sugar was the most valuable of all British imports. We could cite similar figures for tobacco (in the case of the Chesapeake region) and rice (in the case of South Carolina). Annual exports of tobacco increased from 20,000 pounds in 1619 to 38 million pounds in 1700 and then stabilized at a fluctuating level of 25 to 60 million pounds in the eighteenth century. Not surprisingly, the importance of slave-grown produce increased over time. According to one recent estimate, the British Caribbean's share of British exports and imports rose from 10 percent during the first half of the eighteenth century to 20 per cent in 1815. The existence of colonies also provided a boost to British manufactures, although this is not quite the same thing as saying that it was responsible for Britain's industrial "take-off." As is widely recognized, colonies in North America and the Caribbean absorbed a bewildering array of British manufactured goods - furniture, silver, ceramics, musical instruments: the list is endless. In particular, they wanted textiles to clothe their slaves and metal goods used in the operation of basic plantation life. Colonies not only stimulated demand, making up for slack periods at home, but, as in the case of Britain's iron industry, they also encouraged innovation and modernization. It is equally important to stress that there was an African dimension to this burgeoning international economy. Throughout the period of the slave trade Europeans poured vast quantities of manufactured goods into Africa. Last but by no means least, the existence of colonies and trans-Atlantic slave system stimulated trade and shipbuilding, and helped to reshape the urban landscape of slave ports like Bristol and Liverpool, as merchants sought to translate their wealth into property and social status. Slavery and colonial trade, in other words, was big business, which is why the British (like other European powers) were prepared to throw money at it. ### 3.3. The Government Of The Colonies. As it has been mentioned above, in the discussion of types of colonies, the monarch was represented in the colonies by a governor. A governor was originally appointed by the British monarch (or in fact the cabinet) to oversee one of his colonies and was the (sometimes notion-al) head of the colonial administration. A governor's power could diminish as the colony gained more responsible government vested in such institutions as an Executive Council to help with the colony's administration, and in a further stage of self-government, a Legislative Councils and/or Assemblies, in which the Governor often had a role. The title applies to officials with a similar mandate as representatives of a chartered company which has been granted exercise of sovereignty, even with its own armed forces, in a colonial area, often both colonizing and exploiting, sometimes a major state within the state, such as the British East India Company. The British colonial Governor-General of India was also known, though not officially, as the Viceroy of India. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland was also sometimes referred to as a British Viceroy. Different posts were used throughout the ages to control the administration of the Empire by the governor and on behalf of the monarch. By the seventeenth century, when the first colonies were functioning, the practice of appointing two posts of royal secretaries of state was already in place, although the concept of governmental posts appeared later. These secretaries were responsible for home and foreign policies respectively. From 1640 foreign functions were divided into two approximately geographical spheres, northern and southern, which roughly corresponded to the division of Europe into Catholic and Protestant states in the Thirty Years War. It meant that the offices of the Northern and of the Southern departments were created. The Northern Department covered the Holy Roman Empire, Holland, Scandinavia, Poland and Russia and the Southern Department France, the other Latin countries and Turkey. Administrative reforms in 1782 resulted in the Northern Department becoming the Foreign Office and the Southern Department emerging in effect as the Home Office but with responsibility also for the colonies. Charles James Fox was the first Foreign Secretary with the playwright (and M.P. for Stafford) Richard Brinsley Sheridan as his Under-Secretary. The head of the Southern Department became later known as the Secretary of State for the Colonies or Colonial Secretary, a post which disappeared between 1801 and 1854 because of problems with American colonies. In 1801, the responsibility for colonies passed to The Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and this situation lasted until 1854. Then a new Principal Secretary of State was created for the new and separate Colonial Office, whose head was again called the Secretary of State for the Colonies. Responsibility for Indian affairs passed from the East India Company and the Indian Board of Control to the new India Office in 1858. Until 1925, when the office of Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs was created, the Colonial Office had responsibility for all British colonies and dominions besides India, which had its own Secretary of State. [In 196