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How the British Empire enriched itself on Five continents #dwhistoryandculture #dwespanol

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[Music]

this was the beginning of the end of the

largest Empire in history in 1956

Egyptian president Gamal Abdul Nasser

nationalized the sus Canal which had

previously been under Franco British

rule this decision meant that the United

Kingdom which had previously managed the

canal and was also the majority

shareholder of the company lost control

over one of the most important

communication and trade routes in the

world to prevent this from happening

London formed a secret plan with France

and Israel Israeli forces would start a

war with Egypt allowing the French and

British to occupy the canal under the

excuse of mediating the conflict on

October 29th 1956 the Israeli Army

launched an invasion of the Sai

Peninsula and one week later the Franco

British expeditionary Corps landed in

Egypt but it didn't go according to

plan Naser issued an order to sync the

cargo ships which blocked the canal

former US president Dwight Eisenhower

cond demned the intervention but the

aiing French and British economies

depended on us loans so the two European

powers were forced to withdraw in the

end and the United Kingdom's last

Colonial occupation thus ended in

complete failure by then the British

Empire was already beginning to dissolve

ironically it had reached the height of

its power only 35 years earlier in 1921

the British Empire occupied 1/5th of all

emerged lands across five continents and

ruled over 450 million people or one qu

order of the world's population the

important thing is to say about it is

that there was never some grand plan or

conspiracy on the part of the British

Elites to end up controlling a quarter

of the world's surface but how could a

small Kingdom on a rainy North Atlantic

Island become Master of the world and

what is the legacy of that Empire it All

Began in the mid-16th century when

England was only a regional power in Northwestern

America the objective was to find

territories where gold was plentiful and

to locate the Northwest Passage through

present day Canada in order to trade

with Asia but those first Expeditions

some of those pirates went on to become

acclaimed Admirals in the English Navy

like Sir Francis Drake or even Royal

officials like Henry Morgan who

eventually became governor of Jamaica

this was a kind of economic Warfare uh

and that you know the British plundered

the Spanish ships and the Spanish

plundered the French ships and the

French plundered the Portuguese ships

and as much as possible everybody stole

or interdicted each other's each other's

uh uh trade routes along with piracy

another engine of English expansion used

they also obtained Colonial permits that

cemented British Imperial expansion

between the 17th century and 1950 some

20 million people left the British Isles

to settle in the Empire's

territories settlers were encouraged to

take their families with them Portuguese

and Spanish migration to overseas

colonies was much less extensive and

usually only men underwent the

journey one of the big structural

differences between most British

colonization as opposed to Spanish and

Portuguese colonization is that it was

it was often driven by private

Enterprise with government support you

know so you would have these companies

established like the Virginia Bay

Company for example that would uh uh you

know collect shareholders resources

invest them in settlers and then buy the

Monopoly on the goods coming out of of

of Virginia like Tobacco For example

from the British government for the

British government would collect a huge

tax on it the Dynamics of Spanish and

Portuguese colonization were very very

religion and slavery in

America the first successful permanent

English settlement in North America was

Jamestown which was founded in Virginia

in 1607 under the command of the

Virginia Company investors were

disappointed after realizing that there

weren't any gold deposits but the

settlement soon became profitable thanks

to the cultivation of

tobacco in addition to trade and the

migration of adventurers and

disinherited people from England

Christian fundamentalism was another of

the driving forces of British

colonization of North

America the Puritans were unhappy with

the Anglican Church's reforms in 1620

they boarded the Mayflower to create

their version of a Christian Utopia

under English rule that same year they

founded the colony of Plymouth in New

England or present day

Massachusetts the governor of Virginia

Francis Wyatt who served from 1621 to

1625 reported that the immigrants seized

indigenous land our first work will be

to drive out the Savages to take over

the whole country to increase cattle

pigs Etc which will be of much more use

to us for it is infinitely better not to

have heathens Among Us

there's there's nothing inherently uh uh

um contradictory between the ideology of

Christianity and the practice of slavery

I mean in the Bible there's lots of

slavery and in fact for 90% of the

history of Christianity Christians were slave

slave

owners European settlers prospered by

importing more and more African slaves

to work their North American

plantations but the most profitable

colonies were in the

Caribbean in 1655 England seized the

island of Jamaica from Spain which

became became the most profitable sugar

monoculture in the world thanks to slave

labor between 1662 and 1807 a total of

around 3.5 million African slaves

arrived in North America on British

ships and those were the ones who

survived one in seven enslaved Africans

died on the

voyage by the end of the slave trade

England had profited more from the trade

of enslaved Africans than any other

colonial power the relationship between

London and its 13 North American

colonies were ideal and it lasted almost

200 years until the second half of the

18th century when London's greed reached

his Breaking Point American colonists

they were being forced to basically pay

for a giant government bailout of the

East India Company it had become in

modern terms too big to fail these debts

but when the colonies expressed their

anger and political discourse they were

ignored no taxation without

representation was a Fame slogan by

revolutionary leader Samuel Adams one of

America's founding

fathers in 1776 one year after the

American Revolution began the United

States of America declared its

independence but the new country was not

recognized by London until

1783 after that the British crown tried

to prevent similar conflicts by giving

the white colonies more autonomy that

would later facilitate their

independence as well military rule and

looting in

Asia at the end of the 16th century the

spice trade was the biggest business in

the world pepper cloves cinnamon and

Nutmeg were produced in the malas

located in southeast Asia and

India the business returned an average

of 300 and 400% on investment and

attracted the interest of a group of

English capitalists who founded the

British East India Company in 1600 this

Enterprise targeted India at the same

time the Indian subcontinent was ruled

by the mugal Empire which extended into

present day Afghanistan and Bangladesh

it ruled over some 150 million subjects

was the richest region in the world and

the world's leading manufacturer thanks

to its coveted spices fabrics and

jewels Britain compared to say the

Spanish or the or the French which had

this you know Grand Imperial uh uh uh

monarchy the British really didn't have

that and government was always small and

cheap and the British were immensely

under taxed compared to other compared

to other European Imperial powers and

they they liked it that way right

because it's the elite and landholders

going to pay most of the tax they're

like why would I pay money to rule India

I want to I just want to make my profits

the mugal Emperors allowed the East

India Company to set up factories in

their territory like the Portuguese and

Dutch merchants in the 17th century the

company built forts in Madras Bombay and

Kolkata which became prosperous cities

as a result not only did the company

amass enormous wealth but it reached a

height of power unseen by any other

private company in the history of

mankind in fact 18th century philosopher

Edmund Burke described the British

Empire as a state disguise as a

merchant we are talking about a company

that entered its own currency had its

own courts and taxed tens of millions of people

the East India Company eventually built

a private Army of some 200,000 soldiers

that they used to conquer most of India

it took advantage of the Mughal Empire's

decline by arming Indian Mercenaries

cannons these troops took over the

Bengal region where the company began to

operate like a state by leving taxes

which were collected mercilessly even

though the population was starving this

was especially notable during a series

of bad harvests in 1770 to me this is

one of the most profound changes that

the British Implement in India is they

is they say okay you know you used to

have these Villages that were living and

admittedly was a kind of subsistence

living it was it was tough and they were

often on the margin

um so it's not like the British

introduced starvation but by forcing

people to grow say j or tea um uh uh

rather than food stuffs this made that

that agricultural system much more

vulnerable before the arrival of the

British the Mughal Emperors would use

their huge grain reserves to alleviate

the famines but during the famines of

1770 the British company did nothing

although some officials distributed food

many participated in price gouging by

buying r PR and selling it at 10 times

the price in addition the company not

only continued taxing locals but they

even increased them by 10% in some cases

SEO executed anyone who did not pay

without exception this atrocity is

described in William Del rimple book The

Anarchy the Relentless rise of the East

India Company the book features a direct

quote from a British witness who was

there one morning from my bedroom window

I counted 40 lifeless bodies lying

within 20 yards of the wall along with

many hundreds of others agonizing with

Hunger writhing with their stomachs

contracted to the bone that disaster

barely made a dent in the British

coffers according to recent research it

cost the lives of 1.2 million people

over two years but the East India

75 years later a similar disaster would

be repeated in Ireland when a plague

destroyed the potato crops on which the

impoverished Catholic majority of the

Island's peasants depended it's the same

thing with Ireland you know and the the

potato monocultures if you if you if you

kind of put you know engineer these

these vast changes to a system you make

it unstable and you make it more

vulnerable between 1845 and 1849 the

potato blight destroyed Ireland's food

system and the British government did

the same thing the East India Company

had done in Bengal nothing 1 million

Irish people died and another million

immigrated to North America the British

secret AR to the treasury at the time

Charles Edward travelan went so far as

to say God's judgment sent the Calamity

to teach the Irish a lesson plague is an

effective mechanism to control the

population in India the East India

Company controlled the population and

although its Army was larger than the

British crowns it did not treat the

Indian soldiers as equals tired of being

mistreated by the privileged British the

SE waged a rebellion in 1857 known in

India as the first war of independence

this eventually culminates in the one of

the largest acts of colonial rebellion

in history which is the which is the

Indian rebellion of 1857 and it's only

after that that the government says okay

we're going to turn this into a Crown

Colony and we're going to administer it

because we just can't this just can't go

on in 1858 the British government took

advantage of the disaster by expelling

the company and seizing control of India

afterward the country was ruled by a

Viceroy appointed by the British

Parliament Queen Victoria proclaimed a

new regime and declared a new law that

promised equal treatment for Indian

locals and British Nationals but the

seed of distrust had already been sowed

and they had every reason to be

skeptical because the new British

Viceroy once again subjected them to

starvation and abandoned them 1876 and

78 a series of bad harvests devastated

the people of Madras Bombay myor and

hydrabad the governor of Bombay allowed

a price increased for grain and reduced

Aid to starving people even employees of

the empire did not have enough food more

died the Indian population would starve

again during the last years of British

rule in 1942 during the second world war

Japan invaded Burma which produced 15%

of the grain consumed in

India even so authorities continued

exporting the little grain it did have

from Bengal to British troops fighting

the Germans and Italians in North Africa

more than 2 million Indian people died

during that famine which only ended

because of a record Harvest at the end of

of [Music]

1943 after three and a half centuries of

plunder India declared his independence

on August August 15th

1947 2 months earlier VI count Mount

baton the last Vice Roy of India

announced the partition of its

territories into two countries Pakistan and

India human and Commercial exploitation

in Africa English merchants traveled to

the west coast of Africa as early as the

second half of the 16th century to trade

with local kingdoms but they applied the

same tactics used in other regions by

employing English privateers to

Portuguese and Dutch slave gold and ivory

traders in 1681 one century later the

Royal African company began transporting

African slaves to North America and went

on to transport more slaves during the

transatlantic trade than any other

company it's really only when you have

the introduction of widescale African

chattle slavery that the history of of

of what we would call racism um you know

the idea that there are races and they

have certain intrinsic characteristics

inferior or Superior to other races it's

really only in that later period that

racism becomes Central to the

institution of

slavery but during the early 19th

century Europe's presence in Africa was

limited to a few trading posts scattered

along the coast along with a few Dutch

settlers in present day South Africa but

it was a Scottish scientist and

adventurer not a Trader who went on to

become one of the most famous Britains

in history by opening the African continent

continent

David Livingstone was a physician

motivated by Christianity and

abolitionist activism and he embarked on

several expeditions to the heart of

Africa but rather than fighting and

evangelizing on the evils of slavery he

journeyed to territories previously

unexplored by

Europeans those trips attracted the

interest of the West at the Berlin

Conference of 1885 the European powers

divided up the African continent

allowing the British Empire to continue

in 1869 the sews Canal was inaugurated

and soon became an essential route for

communications between London and the Asian

colonies in 1875 the British State

bought a large part of the shares of the

canal to control it then it invaded

Egypt in 1882 eventually turning it into

a protectorate in 1914 British officials

declared that the occupation would be

temporary but they promised to leave

more than 60 times over 40 years staying

in Egypt and continuing its expansion

South at the southernmost tip of Africa

the driving force behind British

expansion was businessman and politician

Cecil rhods an unscrupulous individual

with virulently racist beliefs by making

pacts with locals that he then broke rhs

obtained mining permits and enforced his

rule using his company's personal Army

then he moved North to persuade the

British government to establish

protectorate in the lands he controlled

as a parliamentarian and prime minister

of the cape Colony or present day South

Africa rhs enacted laws to further

colonization his dream was to create

territorial continuity between Cairo and

the cape Colony by uniting them the

British government's Imperial dreams

exacted an enormous toll in Blood and

suffering during the boore wars at the

beginning of the 19th century London

seized the cape colony from the

Netherlands this forced Dutch settlers

in South Africa the bores to move Inland

where they created their own independent

states London waged two Wars to

incorporate them into the British Empire

the second bore War which was fought

between 1899 and 1902 was the bloodiest

and most definitive of the two faced

with Fierce resistance from The

africaner Peasants the British drove

their women children and elderly into

concentration camps killing almost

30,000 people 22,000 of whom were

children the incredible levels of suff

uffing and misery that were inflicted

upon both a bore and African civilians

that didn't come out until later um that

was actually revealed by uh by a press

campaign um because uh British papers

sent to reporters um Emily Emily

hobhouse and um J Hobson to investigate

these stories and it's them uh Emily

hobhouse in particular that came back

with those shocking photos of these

emaciated children one of these photos

was taken of a child named Lizzy vanil

in 1901 we will not display the full

image because her starved condition

could be visually disturbing to some

viewers the British also placed a large

portion of the black African population

into concentration camps resulting in

the same fatal consequences the part of

the story that often doesn't get told

though is that significantly more

Africans died in those concentration

camps than white boore civilians did um

because at the time you know black lives

really did not matter expansion into

Africa accelerated after World War I

when France and the United Kingdom

divided Germany's African colonies

between them London acquired Kenya

allowing them to establish direct

territorial communication between Cairo

and the cape fulfilling Cecil roads

stream at the beginning of the 20th

century the British became the greatest

beneficiary in the Scramble for Africa

with 30% of Africa's population under

their rule but for example in their

efforts you know to colonize parts of

the African continent they certainly

didn't re recognize the uh uh political

legitimacy of of most of the of most of

the groups the the indigenous groups

they encountered same thing in Australia

this resulted in new incidents of

extreme cruelty between 1952 and 1960

British soldiers suppressed the Mau

Guerilla Insurrection waged by the

kikuyu tribe of Kenya Rebels were

captured and tortured with multiple

documented accounts of castration and

rape more than 100,000 suspects and

sympathizers were forced into concent rtion

rtion

camps subsequent investigations have

revealed more than 1,000 people were

executed without due

process a more recent example of British

colonial autocracy was the expulsion of

the chosan who were deported from Diego

1973 chosan were also descended from

black African slaves who during the 18th

century had been brought to the chos

archipelago by the French they were

still living there when Washington

became interested in the islands because

of their strategic location in the

middle of the Indian Ocean so us

authorities requested permission from

the United Kingdom to build a joint base

on Diego Garcia

Island London agreed deporting the

entire civilian population which was

forcibly transferred to the sellis and

Marias and the chians were abandoned at

the ports without any Aid and forced to

live there under miserable conditions

the chians were not offered reparations

until the

1970s from the time of their arrival in

the 16th century and throughout the wave

of Independence campaigns waged during

the 20th century the British Empire left

a trail of Destruction and Death on the African

African

continent racism and banishment in

Oceania as the furthest continent from

the United Kingdom the first British

Fleet did not arrive in Oceania until

1788 bringing more than 600 convicts to

Australia the Empire could no longer

longer transport criminals to the United

States because Britain finally

recognized its independence 5 years

earlier Australia became the new British

prison at the end of the 18th century

becoming home to some 120,000 men and 25,000

25,000

women some were convicted murderers but

others were convicted of minor offenses

like theft of clothing or farm animals

tens of thousands of colonizers

organized themselves into settlements to

occupy Aboriginal hunting grounds white

settlers spread throughout Australia

clashes with Aboriginal Nations on the

continent were especially bloody when

they were driven from their hunting

grounds indigenous communities resisted

and were massacred by the colonizers at

the beginning of the 19th century all

this gave rise to a state of undeclared

war in 1828 British colonial rule

imposed martial law in the state of

Tasmania the Army was authorized to

arrest any Aboriginal person in the

segregated white area and instructed to

kill anyone who resisted patrols were

organized to capture adults and children

creating a human chain that swept across

the island to trap indigenous people on

the peninsula in 1835 living conditions

for Aboriginal tasmanians who had been

forced off the mainland had

significantly deteriorated and the 220

who remained on nearby flenders Island

died within 14 years shortly after the

British Empire seized control of New

Zealand in 1840 colonization there also

led to major conflict with the Maori

which ended in the confiscation of their

lands after the glory

decadence the British Empire reached its

peak at the end of the 19th century it

had led the first Industrial Revolution

but the world was changing and as the

Second Industrial Revolution arrived

other countries like Germany and the

United States began to challenge its

after the war the United Kingdom was

significantly weakened economically and

the country's debts were aggravated by

the 1929 stock market crash making it

increasingly difficult to maintain

colonies that usually consumed more

money than they

earned at the same time the British

government encouraged its white colonies

namely Canada South Africa Australia and

New Zealand to become autonomous

essentially becoming independent

countries by mutual

agreement this courtesy was not extended

to non-white territories whose total

control London sought to maintain at all

cost until the second world war which

the last British colonial campaign the

failed attempt to preserve the SE canal

in 1956 accelerated a decline that would become

become

Unstoppable what's

left oh I would say that 95% of the

historians of the British Empire are

very critical of the legacy of the

British Empire I mean we mostly look at

it from the perspective of a you know a

fairly oppressive entity that was driven

forward by racial ideology um you know

and and the and the the gentlest of

these criticisms is that is that it was

a it was in theory A paternalist system

that is to say where the administrators

were you know trying to do what they

thought was for the good of everybody in

any particular region you know by

advancing an economic and the British

never would have implemented any of

those policies if they didn't know it

was to their immense economic advantage

to do so the truth is that while

deserting their colonies in Africa and

Asia the British Left Behind more chaos

than welfare they drew straight borders

on the map without considering the

territory [Music]

for for [Music]

Britain was um along with France they

were the power that was most involved in

the partition of the Middle East into

Nations that did not correspond with the

uh cultural and political patterns that

were already existent I mean you know

you know part of the boundaries of Syria

were created by an American politician

who only had his position uh because he

had made a huge contribution to the

previous presidential campaign I mean

the man sold toilets like he had no no

right to redraw the map of the middleast

the partition between India and Pakistan

nearly a century later and no longer

under British rule many of these borders

are still a source of conflict The

Remains today of this once great Empire

include distant colonies like the

fauland islands and Gibralter whose rule

is also claimed by Argentina and Spain

respectively the British Empire's Legacy

also features the promotion of

parliamentarism across five continents

and English as the lingua franka in

every corner of the planet which has

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