History

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
Series of conflicts between the English and Dutch during the mid to late 17th cent. The wars had their roots in the Anglo-Dutch commercial rivalry, although the last of the three wars was a wider conflict in which French interests played a primary role.

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
(Oct. 21, 1805) Naval engagement in the Napoleonic Wars that established British naval supremacy in Europe. It was fought west of Cape Trafalgar, Spain, between a Franco-Spanish fleet of 33 ships under Pierre de Villeneuve (1763–1806) and a British fleet of 27 ships under Horatio Nelson. Near the end of the battle, Nelson was mortally wounded by a sniper. No British ships were lost, and Napoleon abandoned his plan to invade England.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
1600–1874, company chartered by Queen Elizabeth I for trade with Asia. The original object of the group of merchants involved was to break the Dutch monopoly of the spice trade with the East Indies.

From Chambers Dictionary of World History
British-controlled and officered military force in India in which the rank and file were recruited from the native populace, although some purely European regiments existed until 1860. The Indian Army served abroad as well as in India, and was a mainstay of the Pax Britannica.

British statesman, b. Ireland. Entering the Irish Parliament in 1790 and the British Parliament in 1794, he was acting chief secretary for Ireland at the time of the Irish rebellion of 1798.

British soldier and administrator who established British rule in India by victories over French troops at Arcot and over the nawab (prince) of Bengal at Plassey in 1757.

British navigator and explorer who commanded three major voyages of discovery, charting and naming many islands of the Pacific Ocean.

1813–73, Scottish missionary and explorer in Africa, the first European to cross the African continent.

British admiral. The most famous of Britain's naval heroes, he is commemorated by the celebrated Nelson Column in Trafalgar Square, London.

Popular name in England for the speculation in the South Sea Company, which failed disastrously in 1720. The company was formed in 1711 by Robert Harley, who needed allies to carry through the peace negotiations to end the War of the Spanish Succession.

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Treaty negotiated in New Zealand in 1840 between the British government and the indigenous Maori. The treaty guaranteed the Maori their own territory and gave them British citizenship.

In The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia
Drive by European nations to establish colonies in Africa. It began in the 1880s, and by 1914 only two African countries remained completely independent.

Empire covering, at its height in the 1920s, about a sixth of the landmass of the Earth, all of its lands recognizing the United Kingdom (UK) as their leader.

From Encyclopedia of African History
Between about 1770 and 1880, exploration of Africa made possible accurate maps and publishable information on the continent.

From Encyclopedia of African History
The nineteenth century saw a dramatic change in Africa's contact with Europe, as European powers sent their armies to initiate and implement their plans of colonization. The gradual European penetration into the African hinterland escalated in the 1870s, so that by the 1890s the entire map of Africa was altered, with large tracts of land nevertheless still unconquered.

From Encyclopedia of African History
Three hundred years of foreign domination and a century of formal colonial rule in Africa left political, economic, and social scars that are still conspicuously evident in contemporary African society.

From Encyclopedia of African History
After World War II, nationalists in Africa overthrew European colonial rule and regained their peoples' independence in one of the world's great revolutionary movements. In Sub-Saharan Africa, this political revolution stretched from the birth of Ghana in 1957 to the first democratically elected government of South Africa in 1994.

From Encyclopedia of Empire
The creation of overseas empires in the 19th century gave European nation-states control of much of the earth's surface, most spectacularly in Africa from 1884 to 1914, but it took less than a century for wars of independence to erupt in many of their colonies.