ABSTRACT
Britain’s imperial history begins with England’s annexation of its close neighbours, Scotland, Wales and Ireland. As early as the twelfth century, English incursions into these lands offer the earliest examples of British imperial expansion. By the start of the nineteenth century, all three of these nations had been folded into a larger nation ruled from the centre and to the advantage of the English. Conformity to Anglican Protestantism, attacks on local customs and laws, the immiseration of agricultural communities and the appropriation of land followed, but never managed to crush national identities successfully.
