• The British Isles
• North America now Canada and USA
• Africa, all the valuable areas including Egypt south to gold and diamond rich South Africa and oil rich Nigeria in the west.
• The Middle East, dominating oil rich Iraq and Iran and the Holy Land of Israel and Palestine.
• Southern Asia including the whole Indian Sub-continent plus Burma and Malay.
• Australasia (Australia and New Zealand)

1000 years ago
England's first conquest was the neighbouring smaller land mass of Ireland a few miles away on its west coast. This was achieved some 1000 years ago under King Henry 2nd. Henry at this time was already ruling the whole of western France from Calais to the Spanish border as well as England and was the most powerful king in Europe. So the conquest of Ireland was not difficult but ruling it was. (Click here for the detailed pages on the History of Ireland where you will find that Henry was invited into Ireland by an Irish King to help with internal squabbles.)

500 years ago
The route England took to "conquer" North America, India, Africa, Palestine, Iraq, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand is a different story. There was competition from much of Europe where France, Spain and Holland were initially more powerful than England.

The catalyst which sent the seafaring European nations exploring was the development of a powerful Islamic state called the Ottoman Empire. 1450 saw the Islamic Ottomans (headquartered in Istanbul Turkey) become so powerful that the Mediterranean Sea was called an Ottoman Lake. Any Christian ship was blown out of the sea which caused the Christian Europeans to look for another route to the Spice Islands of Indonesia and China for Silk and porcelain (China wear). Italians from Venice and Genoa were the best navigators of the time;

• The Spanish hired Christopher Columbo from Genoa, who in 1492 sailed west and "discovered" the Caribbean for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
• English Henry 7th hired the Genoan Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot) who was told to keep well away from the powerful Spanish and find something further north perhaps even the fabled North West Passage to India. He discovered Newfoundland in 1497.

Then:

Henry 8th (1509-1547) set the scene for England with three critical moves:

1. Henry stopped attacking France to get his Norman, (Western French,) lands back and spent his money on the commencement of a powerful navy.
2. At the time of the Reformation, Henry took England away from the Pope in Rome and kept the money which would have been sent to the Pope from England. In addition he plundered many of the Catholic monasteries in England and Ireland which added hugely to his naval funds.
3. After Henry, England moved significantly away from the Christian Roman Catholic faith towards the new Christian Protestantism which created a religious minefield of different Protestant cults. Worshipers were generally forbidden to follow their particular brand of their chosen faith if it was not the Church of England. Emigration to a new land was therefore a definite option for the Puritans and Quakers.
4. By the Elizabethan period the English Protestant navy was ready to hone its fighting skills against the powerful Catholic navies from France and Spain (Armada etc) and English privateers like Drake honed their skills of seamanship by hijacking the Spanish Galleons laden with gold and silver as they sailed from Mexico and South America past the Caribbean Islands. One hijack could finance a year's fiscal expenditure for all of Elizabethan England.

1500-1600
English maritime pirates and the religious fever developed to defend Protestant England against mighty Catholic aggressors was the catalyst to the early success of the English colonialists and traders.

1600-1700
In the early part of this century English explorers travelled, settled and farmed in three main areas in the West where the local inhabitants were still a stoneage civilisation.

• Virginia (USA)
• Boston area (USA)
• The Caribbean

Simultaneously in the East the English set up trading posts, as the local inhabitants had a sophisticated culture (Muslim and Hindu based) and were already farmers and manufactures of tradeable goods.

• India

The Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and French did likewise but initially there was room for all as these new territories were comparatively huge and the number of settlers small. This period also saw a settlement in Southern Africa by strict Dutch Presbyterians refugees. Also known as Boers or Afrikaners.

The commencement of a Jewish based banking system in England. At much the same time, English rulers Oliver Cromwell followed by Charles 2nd, observing how the Dutch economy was booming fuelled by Jewish money lenders, agreed to a request from some fleeing Jews from northern Europe and Spain to settle in England. From this moment on it was the Jews of England who could finance the military expenditure required by the British to support their colonies, which was not available to either France, Portugal or Spain where Jews were still non persona grata or worse.

1700-1750
English colonialists, by comparison with those from Spain, were traders and farmers, rather than gold and silver thieves or religious missionaries (Catholic). In addition even though French and Spanish peasants were worse off economically than their English equivalents at the time, it was the English who emigrated voluntarily in vast numbers (more than 20 times their nearest rivals(the French). The French and Spanish governments could not persuade their countrymen to leave their homeland. This, particularly in North America is the reason why Americans speak largely English rather than French or Spanish. Internal religious conflict was the obvious reason to leave England the other was simply the entrepreneurial culture which the Protestant religions engender.

In the latter part of this period the English had two vital victories over the French as a culmination of the so called Seven Years War.

• In North America (actually in modern day Canada) English army general, James Wolfe (1725-59) captured the French impenetrable fortress town of Quebec on the St Lawrence seaway in 1759. From this time the French influence in North America collapsed.
• In India, Englishman Clive (Baron Robert Clive of Plassey 1725-74) defeated the French at Arcot 1751 and then in 1757 he recaptured Calcutta from the local Bengali ruler, and later defeating him at Plassey, putting England, via the British East India Company, in charge of the richest area in India. Now mainly Bangladesh. (And the taxes rolled in.)

1800-1950
The English were now set to rule the world, being by far the most powerful nation in Europe and experienced no aggression from China who had stagnated since the sixteenth century. Not only this, the English Protestant entrepreneurial spirit not only produced explorers and traders but also thinkers, scientists and inventors who created the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. English factories were powered by English inventions and English colonial raw materials and transported in English designed and built shipping. The Army and Navy to protect all this was expensive and London taxed the colonies to help pay the bill. The rich state of Bengal in India accepted the burden but not so the English settlers in North America who, even though they were only taxed at one tenth of those at home, rebelled and by 1800 North America was split into two, present day Canada who wanted to stay within the Empire and the USA who fought their English brothers and won their freedom.

Outside North America the British Empire steadily expanded as the English colonised firstly Australia and then New Zealand both also stone age countries like America. Both countries speak English as a result. The Indian colony grew to rule most of India initially under the East India trading company and then by direct rule from Westminster. India's easterly neighbours Burma and Malay also fell to England and England made their Eastern strong hold at Fortress Singapore.

The last unexplored continent by white men was Africa and around 1880 Europeans started a race to individually rule as much of Africa as possible. Small parts of Africa was already under some sort of European rule which had commenced 400 years previously as the Portuguese, French and English occupied watering ports round the African shores needed for their passages to India and the Far East not to mention slaving stations commenced about the same time. The only large white immigration to Africa before 1850 were the fundamentalist Protestant Dutch settlers in South Africa called Boers or Afrikaners who settled in 1650. They remained isolated and religiously happy as God's farmers amongst the local black majority who they despised and terrified with there superior weaponry, hard work and orderly life style.

The first white man to systematically explore Africa was Scotsman Dr David Livingstone (1813-1877). As a one man band he had two aims to spread Christianity and find the source of the Nile. His writings and lectures in London were the catalyst to later emigrants notably Cecil Rhodes 1853-1902 who secured the whole of Southern Africa for the English on the backs of his wealth gained by dominating the discovery and exploitation of the local diamond mines.

In the north of Africa, the Suez Canal, the link between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean was designed and built by the French but protected by a powerful English garrison, as three quarters of the shipping through the canal was British on their way to the British colonies in the East. The English came to a defence agreement with Egypt to enhance their position. This developed into effective control of all Egypt and their southern neighbour Sudan by the English by 1914. By this time the partition of Africa was complete with England ruling all the valuable parts from Egypt in the north east, south to the southern tip of Africa plus on the west coast, Nigeria and the smaller states of Gambia and Sierra Leone. The French on the other hand, ended up with a load of sand and tropical forests namely, Algeria and most of the Sahara desert and Madagascar. The rest was split between Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Italy.