ABSTRACT
From the first English colonial ventures in the sixteenth century to decolonization in the late twentieth century, the British empire lasted around four hundred years, and included areas of land on all five continents. Its development cannot be attributed to any one cause: successive British governments, companies and individual colonists participated in the empire for profit, for national prestige, to escape conditions in their home countries and occasionally from an idealistic desire to share with the rest of the world the benefits of British civilization. Their interventions, and their interactions with colonized people, shaped the course of the world’s history.
