Empire & Commonwealth

“Rule, Britannia!” was first performed at Cliveden in 1740, with music by Thomas Arne. Its naval refrain became a patriotic fixture, now closely associated with the Last Night of the Proms.

For some listeners it is a rousing concert tradition; for others, its language recalls imperial domination. That is why a familiar singalong can become a political argument. The song’s promise of British freedom also sits uneasily beside Britain’s involvement in enslaving other people.

Sources and further reading: National Trust: Cliveden ↗ · The music and traditions page ↗

At Trafalgar in 1805, Nelson’s fleet defeated the combined French and Spanish fleet. Nelson died during the battle. Trafalgar Square and Nelson’s Column turn that naval victory into part of the London landscape.

The Royal Navy protected shipping, fought rival powers and enabled Britain to project force across oceans. Naval strength helped sustain the empire, but armies, finance, commercial companies and local alliances also mattered. After 1807, the Navy also played a major role in suppressing the Atlantic slave trade.

HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship, survives at Portsmouth. Greenwich offers the London starting point: objects and stories at the National Maritime Museum connect naval power to the people who served and the societies affected.

Sources and further reading: Royal Museums Greenwich: Nelson’s legacy ↗ · HMS Victory history ↗

Knowing longitude helped ships establish their east-west position. John Harrison’s marine timekeepers were a major breakthrough: accurate time carried to sea could be compared with local time to calculate position.

In 1884 an international conference chose the Greenwich meridian as the prime meridian. British charts and shipping helped make it the practical choice. This was international standardisation with a maritime history behind it.

Visit the Royal Observatory for time and navigation, the National Maritime Museum for the wider maritime story, and Cutty Sark for the world of merchant sailing ships.

Sources and further reading: Harrison and longitude ↗ · The prime meridian ↗

The East India Company began in 1600 as a trading company. It developed armies, collected revenue and came to govern large parts of the Indian subcontinent. Following the rebellion of 1857, the British Crown took over its governmental role in 1858.

The Hudson’s Bay Company, chartered in London in 1670, offers a Canadian parallel in the relationship between commercial privilege, territorial claims and imperial power. Its history depended on Indigenous trading networks and knowledge. The two companies had different histories, but both show why “a business” could mean much more than selling goods.

Sources and further reading: National Army Museum: company armies ↗ · Canada & Britain: HBC and the constitutional story ↗

The Opium Wars were fought in the context of Britain’s commercial demands and the opium trade into China. After the first war, Hong Kong Island was ceded to Britain in 1842; later acquisitions and a lease expanded the territory.

Hong Kong was handed over to China in 1997. Its history makes a useful corrective to the idea that imperial trade was simply peaceful exchange between willing partners.

Sources and further reading: National Army Museum: the China wars ↗ · National Archives: Hong Kong and the Opium Wars ↗

By the 1920s, British imperial rule extended over more than 400 million people. The familiar phrase about the sun never setting captured its geographical reach.

A map coloured uniformly can conceal very different arrangements: self-governing settler dominions such as Canada, colonies, protectorates and British rule in India. Political rights and power were distributed unequally, including within settler societies. There was no single experience of being “in the empire”.

Sources and further reading: National Archives: the 1920s ↗

Britain was a major participant in the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans. Plantation wealth, shipping, insurance and finance connected that violence to British ports and businesses.

1807: Parliament abolished the British slave trade. This did not free people already enslaved. 1833: the Slavery Abolition Act provided for abolition in most British colonies, taking effect in 1834. Many people were compelled to continue working under the “apprenticeship” system until 1838.

Resistance by enslaved people and campaigning by Black abolitionists, including Olaudah Equiano, belong alongside parliamentary reform in this history.

Sources and further reading: Parliament: the slave trade and abolition ↗ · National Archives: abolition and compensation ↗

The government allocated £20 million to compensate slave owners for the loss of what the law had treated as their property. The formerly enslaved received no equivalent compensation. UCL’s research traces recipients and the connections between slavery’s proceeds and British society.

You may hear that “Britain only finished paying for slavery in 2015”. The precise point is that borrowing associated with compensation became part of later consolidated government debt; the remaining undated government bonds were redeemed in 2015. It does not mean slave owners were receiving new compensation payments until then.

Sources and further reading: UCL: Legacies of British Slavery ↗ · HM Treasury: historical debt redemption ↗

India and Pakistan became independent in 1947. Partition involved the drawing of new borders, mass displacement and terrible communal violence. Independence was a hard-won political achievement; the human cost of Partition remains part of family histories in Britain and South Asia.

This was one of the central turning points in the end of empire, shaped by anti-colonial movements as well as Britain’s weakened position after the Second World War.

Sources and further reading: National Army Museum: independence and Partition ↗

In 1956, Britain and France, acting in collusion with Israel, intervened against Egypt after President Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company. International opposition and financial pressure forced withdrawal. Suez exposed the limits of Britain’s ability to act independently as an imperial power.

Harold Macmillan’s 1960 “wind of change” speech acknowledged the force of African nationalism. Many African and Caribbean countries gained independence in the following years. This was not simply a gift from London: political organisation, protest, negotiation and sometimes armed struggle drove change.

Sources and further reading: National Army Museum: Suez ↗ · GOV.UK: Macmillan ↗

On 13 April 1919, troops commanded by Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer fired without warning into a gathering at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar. Hundreds were killed. The crowd included protesters and people attending a festival.

The massacre became a defining example of colonial violence and helped intensify opposition to British rule in India. It remains part of debates about remembrance, accountability and what an apology should mean.

National Army Museum: Dyer and Amritsar ↗

During the Emergency in Kenya, colonial authorities used detention and brutal repression against the Mau Mau insurgency and people suspected of supporting it. In 2013 the British government recognised that Kenyans had suffered torture and ill-treatment under the colonial administration and announced a settlement for thousands of claimants.

Independence dates alone miss what people lived through. Ireland’s relationship with British power has its own long history; our Troubles briefing explains the later conflict and its London legacy.

Sources and further reading: Government statement on the Mau Mau settlement ↗

The Commonwealth today is a voluntary association of 56 independent countries, including Canada. The 1949 London Declaration established the basis of the modern association. It includes republics and countries that were not British colonies.

King Charles III is Head of the Commonwealth. This is a symbolic role, not government over its members, and it is not hereditary: future heads will be chosen by Commonwealth leaders. Commonwealth membership and having the King as head of state are different things.

The Games, educational and professional networks, and intergovernmental cooperation keep the association visible. Its Secretariat is based at Marlborough House on Pall Mall.

Sources and further reading: Commonwealth Secretariat: about the association ↗

Commonwealth citizenship can be relevant to UK voting eligibility and particular immigration routes, but it is not a general right to settle or work in Britain. Residence, immigration status and the requirements of each route matter.

Use the Canada & Britain practical links for voting, visas, driving and pensions, rather than treating shared history as a legal entitlement.

Words such as bungalow, shampoo, pyjamas and jungle entered English through contact with South Asian languages. Their routes reflect travel, trade and colonial encounters; they are reminders that English has always borrowed.

Tea, sugar and curry connect everyday British habits to overseas production and migration. Tonic water’s quinine comes from cinchona, a South American tree whose cultivation was transferred into imperial networks. Quinine’s use against malaria is part of the G&T’s background.

Follow these connections into Food & drink and Read the Room.

Sources and further reading: Kew: tonic water’s history ↗

OBE and MBE stand for Officer and Member of the Order of the British Empire. Those names remain in the honours system. Recognition of service and discomfort with the imperial title can coexist; people attach different meanings to accepting an honour.

The arrival of Empire Windrush in 1948 became a landmark in the story of post-war Caribbean migration. Britain’s Caribbean, African and South Asian communities are part of the story of empire and its aftermath, as well as histories that reach far beyond it. They helped build modern British life.

Sources and further reading: Official honours guide ↗ · English Heritage: Windrush ↗

Edward Colston’s statue was pulled down in Bristol in June 2020. The dispute concerned the public celebration of a man involved in the slave trade. The Rhodes Must Fall campaign in Oxford similarly challenged the honour given to Cecil Rhodes.

These arguments are often about what a public space celebrates, who chooses and how historical context is supplied. Removing a statue, displaying it in a museum and adding interpretation are different proposals.

Sources and further reading: Bristol Museums: the Colston statue ↗ · Oriel: the Rhodes legacy ↗

The Benin Bronzes and the Parthenon sculptures are two prominent restitution debates, with different acquisition histories. Many Benin objects were taken during the British military expedition of 1897. The dispute over the Parthenon sculptures concerns their removal from Athens under Ottoman rule and their later acquisition by the British Museum.

Read provenance labels: who made an object, who acquired it, under what circumstances and who seeks its return. Museum accounts are useful starting points, alongside the perspectives of the communities and countries seeking restitution.

Sources and further reading: British Museum: collecting and empire trail ↗

Nonfiction

An exploration of how empire’s legacy shapes modern British life and arguments about identity.

About the book ↗

Fiction

Families, migration and identity in north London, told across generations with humour and competing perspectives.

About the book ↗