Lecture 1
Lecture 1
Lecture 1
There have been 4 centuries of spread outwards from the central Islands of the U.K since
Henry VII. He first had to put an end to the Civil War, and then he developed the navy to
secure English defence and safety for merchants. This was followed by expansion overseas. He
put heavy duties on imported and exported goods by foreigners as English trade at that time
The British Empire took rise in the wake of merchant adventurers whom Henry VII helped
to build up their trade in English cloth, in Germany and central Europe. As England had been
so busy with Civil Wars, it did not take part in the discovery of the world as done by Spain and
Portugal. Henry VII was induced by the news of Columbus in 1492 in discovering new islands
in America, to give John Cabot (Venetian), the permission to find Newfoundland. The
mission ended in failure. Nothing was heard of the expedition, or of John Cabot, ever since.
The second fleet sent in 1498 ended in failure too. This expedition took place because the King
was more interested in the more-distant spiceries in the Eastern most part of Asia. This new
failure led to Englishmen’s loss of interest in exploration overseas for many years. In 1534, the
The British were so jealous that, under Edward I, the great London merchants subscribed
money to found a company called “Merchant Adventures For the Discovery of New Trade”
to sail round the North Cape and Richard Chancellor opened the Muscovy trade through the
White Sea, then Levant or Turkey company was founded in London, first by a roundabout
way, then by way of the Mediterranean. Then there was Sir Humphery Gilbert’s idea of finding
a passage to Cathay (North China)by the North-West passage. This was under Queen Elizabeth
I who was officially at peace and led to the founding of the Cathay Company which failed with
martin Frobisher.
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Then, there was the privateering trade by Devon and Plymouth seamen against the
Spaniards and the Portuguese. There was also English smuggling of slaves illegally bought and
sold to the Spaniards. In 1577,Queen Elizabeth I allowed Francis Drake to plunder his way
into the dangerous Magellan Straits(a short sea passage) into the Pacific with the idea of
reaching the spiceries by sailing westwards, and possibly of finding rich “Terra Australis” in
the south.
He got to the South Sea where the Spaniards were defenceless and unguarded. He then
went to Peru and Nova Albion (San Francisco) which he took for the name of Queen Elizabeth
just as Frobisher had done in the Arctic. These were the first colonial annexations ever made
by Englishmen, but the latter did not live in California till nearly 3 centuries later. His voyage
round the world obtained for England a treaty, a share of the Eastern trade, with the rulers of
the spiceries. He returned to England by way of the Cape of Good Hope (under Portuguese
monopoly)
Elizabeth was not yet ready to challenge the claims of Spain and Portugal to be the sole
rulers of the seas of the new World and the East, but Drake pointed the way to find a new
English Empire. Elizabeth was the leader of the Protestant nations and became a potential