Greetings! This is certainly a rather...large question before us, and it is one that historians have been (and will likely continue to be) approaching in many different ways. As with so many things in history, there is no single definitive answer as to how the British Empire became so large despite starting both late and with less than its other European counterparts. This multi-part response will explore both the processes, conditions, and consequences of British "empire-building", and links to other relevant responses I have weighed in on shall be included towards the end. As a result, we shall end up with something I like to call a 'Frankenstein response' stitched together from components of previous threads I have commented on, and animated by the odd transition/header here and there. Let's begin.

The Origins of Britannia

"For I take England and all its Plantations to be one great Body, those being the so many Limbs or Counties belonging to it, therefore when we consume their Growth we do as it were spend the Fruits of our own Land and what thereof we sell to our Neighbours for Bullion, or such commodities as must pay for therein, brings a second Profit to the Nation...This was the first Design of settling Plantations abroad, that the People of England might better maintain a Commerce and Trade among themselves, the chief Profit was to redound [contribute] to the Centre..."

- Bristol merchant John Cary, writing in his 1695 work Essay on the State of England in Relation to its Trade, its Poor, and its Taxes.

In the age of European Empires, England was a latecomer. By the turn of the 17th century she had long lost her possessions in France, had seen off the Spanish Armada, and had enemies all over Europe (mainly a result of her various religious settlements as monarchs came and went). As a result, the ambitions of the English government would no longer be confined to the continent, where security was their main concern above all else. Instead, the English leaders of the age began to realise that if their nation was to rise in power and prestige in the mercantile system of the early modern age, they would need to seek maritime expansion beyond the shores of Europe.

Yet for all the dreams of empire and expansion which were propgated in the 1600s, the English were not highly successful. Their colony at Roanoke had been wiped out under mysterious circumstances, they continued to eye the treasure-hauls of Spain and Portugal's possessions with great envy, and the Dutch had beaten them to the lucrative spice trade of the East Indies. England itself would soon undergo an era of revolution and consolidation, with the conquest of Ireland and the union with Scotland securing the British Isles (save for the Jacobite Rising of 1715 and continued civil tensions in Ireland). Then came their "big break" if you will: The War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713). Through almost a decade of warfare with the other powers of Europe, Britain asserted her position as a great naval and military power, and the peace treaty saw her gain a wealth of new "colonial" possessions in North America. John Darwin on these early gains:

"At the end of that war, they acquired in the peace treaty the right to sell slaves into Spanish America, the so-called asiento, puncturing at last the continent's commercial seclusion. And they had acquired their own empire of 'plantations' and 'factories': the sprinkling of settlements along the North American coast and among the Caribbean islands; the Levant and East India Companies' depots and enclaves at Izmir, Aleppo, Basra, Bandar Abbas, Surat, Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta. They controlled much of the fishery on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland. Their Hudson's Bay fur trade rivalled that of the French. They were deep in the slave trade. They had even begun to buy tea at Canton in China."

All of these gains were not driven by a single, united vision of empire by any means. Instead, all of them shared a key goal of the acquisitions and activities of British agents in the area: profit. The cycle was simple: raw produce from the colonies could be refined, shipped to Great Britain, and then re-exported at a profit to Europe and other markets across the world. Though how to achieve this system of trade was always a contentious topic. The East India Company and its counterparts in the Levant argued that without monopolies, trade would be unprofitable and short-lived. Those who denounced such claims argued that free trade was in the benefit of all of Britain's merchantmen and traders, rather than the monopolistic rights which the Crown could (and did) often grant to Companies and "private imperialists". Yet this group was a minority in the seventeenth century, and thus the system of "entrepot imperialism" began to take hold across most of the British possessions, where it imposed a strict "commercial straitjacket" on the freedoms of the settlers and traders who resented the "English exclusivity" of the system. All of this discourse on the economic systems of what was to be the British Empire makes even clearer that profit was at the heart (and indeed the common heart) of all the "strands" of early expansion. As John Darwin - who by the way, will serve as our "historian companion" on these responses - remarks on this motivation:

"No single vision of empire lay behind this expansion. But there was agreement on one thing: that the point of expansion was to make England richer. Merchants venturing to the Near East and India would discover new markets. Founding American colonies would create them. Exotic goods from the East could be resold at a profit to European customers. Refining raw produce that was grown in the colonies would increase employment at home, add to its value, provide a valuable export, and profit both merchants and shipping."

But dreaming of profit was one thing. To seek it out, to secure it from rivals (local or foreign), and to sow the seeds of empire, was another thing entirely. In that regard, a key concept would soon emerge which would shape the reality of British imperialism for the better part of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries: the "man on the spot".

Part 1 of 4