The English overseas possessions, sometimes referred to as the English Empire, comprised a variety of overseas territories and colonies that were conquered or otherwise acquired by the Kingdom of England before 1707 when the Acts of Union joined England with the Kingdom of Scotland and created of the Kingdom of Great Britain. Formerly Scots were excluded from English overseas possessions, but following 1707 they could participate in the expanding British Empire.
The first English overseas settlements were established in Ireland and patterns of rule over a subordinated populated territory developed following the sixteenth-century Tudor conquest. There were initial English voyages of exploration during the reign of Henry VII of England, and further settlement in Ireland. During the reign of Elizabeth I(1558-1603) there were unsuccessful attempts at North American colonization. Not until the succession in 1603 of James VI of Scotland to the throne of England (ruling as James I) were permanent overseas settlements successfully established in North America, first at Jamestown, Virginia (1607), the West Indies, and the Plymouth Colony of religious dissenters in New England (1620). All these were in areas already occupied by indigenous populations and claimed by the Spanish Empire, but not settled by it. During the 17th century, Maine, Plymouth, New Hampshire, Salem, Massachusetts Bay, Nova Scotia, Connecticut, New Haven, Maryland, and Rhode Island and Providence were settled. In 1664, New Netherland and New Sweden were taken from the Dutch, becoming New York, New Jersey, and parts of Delaware and Pennsylvania.
In Asia, trading posts called "factories" in the East Indies, such as Bantam, and in the Indian subcontinent, beginning with Surat. In 1639, a series of English fortresses on the Indian coast was initiated with Fort St George. In 1661, the marriage of King Charles II to Catherine of Braganza brought him as part of her dowry new possessions which until then had been Portuguese, including Tangier in North Africa and Bombay in India.
Origins
The Kingdom of England is generally dated from the rule of Æthelstan from 927.Keynes, Simon. "Edward, King of the Anglo-Saxons" in N. J. Higham & D. H. Hill, Edward the Elder 899-924 (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 61. During the rule of the House of Knýtlinga, from 1013 to 1014 and 1016 to 1042, England was part of a personal union that included domains in Scandinavia. In 1066, William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, conquered England, making the Duchy a Crown land of the English throne. Through the remainder of the Middle Ages the kings of England held extensive territories in France, based on their history in this Duchy. Under the Angevin Empire, England formed part of a collection of lands in the British Isles and France held by the Plantagenet dynasty. The collapse of this dynasty led to the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453) between England and France. At the outset of the war the Kings of England ruled almost all of France, but by the end of it in 1453 only the Pale of Calais remained to them.Griffiths, Ralph A. King and Country: England and Wales in the Fifteenth Century (2003, ), p. 53 Calais was eventually lost to the French in 1558. The Channel Islands, as the remnants of the Duchy of Normandy, retain their link to the Crown to the present day.
Ireland The first English overseas expansion occurred as early as 1169, when the Norman invasion of Ireland began to establish English possessions in Ireland, with thousands of English and Welsh settlers arriving in Ireland.Bartlett, Thomas. Ireland: A History (2010, ) p. 40. Friedrich Engels observed that "Ireland may be regarded as the first English colony."Friedrich Engels quoted in Jane Ohlmeyer, Making Empire: Ireland, Imperialism, & the Early Modern World. New York: Oxford University Press 2023, vii The Lordship of Ireland was claimed for centuries by the English monarch; however, English control mostly was resigned to an area of Ireland known as The Pale. Most of Ireland, large swaths of Munster, Ulster and Connaught remained independent of English rule until the Tudor and Stuart periods. It was not until the 16th century that the Tudor monarchs of England began to "plant" Protestant settlers in Ireland as part of the plantations of Ireland.Falkiner, Caesar Litton (1904). Illustrations of Irish history and topography, mainly of the 17th century. London: Longmans, Green, & Co. p. 117. ISBN 1-144-76601-X.Moody, T. W.; Martin, F. X., eds. (1967). The Course of Irish History. Cork: Mercier Press. p. 370.Ranelagh, John (1994). A Short History of Ireland. Cambridge University Press. p. 36.Edwards, Ruth Dudley; Hourican, Bridget (2005). An Atlas of Irish History. Psychology Press. pp. 33–34. These plantations included King's County, now County Offaly, and Queen's County, now County Laois, in 1556.3 & 4 Phil & Mar, c.2 (1556). The Act was repealed in 1962 Archived 11 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine. A joint-stock plantation was established in the late 1560s at Kerrycurrihy near Cork city, on land leased from the Earl of Desmond.Lennon, Colm. Sixteenth Century Ireland, the Incomplete Conquest, pp. 211–213 In the early 17th century the Plantation of Ulster began, and thousands of Scottish and Northern English colonists were settled in the province of Ulster.Hill, George. The Fall of Irish Chiefs and Clans and the Plantation of Ulster (2004, ) West Country men, including Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Ralph Lane, Sir Richard Grenville, and John White were involved in projects of plantation schemes in Ireland before then becoming involved in the New World and saw how individual wealth and power were enhanced by them.Elliott, J.H. Empires of the Atlantic World. New Haven: Yale University Press 2006, 24 English control of Ireland fluctuated for centuries until Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801, following the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
New World beginnings Spanish success in exploration and colonization in the Western Hemisphere, beginning in the late 1400s and early 1500s, were an inspiration and a model for the English. The voyages of Christopher Columbus began in 1492, sailing west into the unknown with hopes of reaching Asia. He sighted land in the West Indies on 12 October that year, and in 1493 returned to colonize one of the islands he mistook for "the Indies" and named the indigenous peoples "Indians". The Spanish colonists sought riches, but except for gold the indigenous fashioned into ornaments, there was no great treasure. The Spanish essentially enslaved the indigenous populations. In 1496, excited by the successes in overseas exploration of the Portuguese and the Spanish, King Henry VII of England commissioned John Cabot to lead a voyage to find a route from the Atlantic to the Spice Islands of Asia, subsequently known as the search for the North West Passage. Cabot sailed in 1497, and made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland. There, he believed he had reached Asia and made no attempt to found a permanent colony.Andrews, Kenneth. Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630 (Cambridge University Press, 1984, ) p. 45. He led another voyage to the Americas the following year, but nothing was heard of him or his ships again.Ferguson, Niall. Colossus: The Price of America's Empire (Penguin, 2004, p. 4)
Continued Spanish explorations in the circum-Caribbean region resulted in the world-altering Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire (1519-21) in which the expedition led by Hernán Cortés and supported by thousands of indigenous allies brought Central Mexico under Spanish control. Densely populated, hierarchical organized indigenous populations used to rending tribute and performing labor duties, transformed Europe's idea of the possibilities of these (to them) unknown lands and peoples. Then the Spanish repeated the feat in the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. The discovery of vast deposits of silver in northern Mexico in the 1550s and in the highland Andes as well transformed Spain a major world power.
The English Reformation had made enemies of England and Catholic Spain. In 1562 Elizabeth sanctioned the privateers Hawkins and Drake to attack Spanish ships off the coast of West Africa.Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: the History of the Atlantic Slave Trade (Picador, 1997), pp. 155–158. Later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth approved further raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and against shipping returning to Europe with treasure from the New World.Ferguson (2004), p. 7. Meanwhile, the influential writers Richard Hakluyt and John Dee were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own overseas empire. Spain was well established in the Americas, while Portugal had built up a network of trading posts and fortresses on the coasts of Africa, Brazil, and China, and the French had already begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River, which later became New France.Lloyd, Trevor Owen. The British Empire 1558–1995 (Oxford University Press, 1996, ), pp. 4–8.
The first English overseas colonies The first English overseas colonies started in 1556 with the plantations of Ireland after the Tudor conquest of Ireland. One such overseas joint stock colony was established in the late 1560s, at Kerrycurrihy near Cork cityLennon, pp. 211–213 Several people who helped establish colonies in Ireland also later played a part in the early colonization of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country men.
The first English colonies overseas in America was made in the last quarter of the 16th century, in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.Canny, Nicholas. The Origins of Empire, The Oxford History of the British Empire, vol. I (Oxford University Press, 1998, ), p. 35 The 1580s saw the first attempt at permanent English settlements in North America, a generation before the Plantation of Ulster and occurring a little bit after the plantation of Munster. Soon there was an explosion of English colonial activity, driven by men seeking new land, by the pursuit of trade, and by the search for religious freedom. In the 17th century, the destination of most English people making a new life overseas was in the West Indies rather than in North America.
Early claims Financed by the Muscovy Company, Martin Frobisher set sail on 7 June 1576, from Blackwall, London, seeking the North West Passage. In August 1576, he landed at what he named Frobisher Bay on Baffin Island. This was marked by the first Church of England service recorded on North American soil. Frobisher returned to Frobisher Bay in 1577, taking possession of the south side of it in Queen Elizabeth's name. In a third voyage, in 1578, he reached the shores of Greenland and also made an unsuccessful attempt at founding a settlement in Frobisher Bay.The Nunavut Voyages of Martin Frobisher at web site of the Canadian Museum of Civilization, accessed 5 August 2011 While on the coast of Greenland, he also claimed that for England.McDermott, James. Martin Frobisher: Elizabethan privateer (Yale University Press, 2001, .) p. 190
At the same time, between 1577 and 1580, Sir Francis Drake was circumnavigating the globe. He claimed Elizabeth Island off Cape Horn for his queen, and on 24 August 1578 claimed another Elizabeth Island, in the Straits of Magellan.Fletcher, Francis. The World encompassed by Sir Francis Drake (1854 edition) by the Hakluyt Society, p. 75. In 1579, he landed on the north coast of California, claiming the area for Elizabeth as "New Albion". However, these claims were not followed up by settlements.Sugden, John. Sir Francis Drake (Barrie & Jenkins, 1990, ), p. 118.