The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomy and freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity by allegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal.

 The British Empire was one of the largest and most extensive empires in recorded history. At its height it encompassed territories on every inhabited continent and brought hundreds of millions of people under British imperial rule.

Its history cannot adequately be described as either wholly beneficial or wholly harmful.

The Empire developed over several centuries rather than according to a single plan. English overseas settlement and commercial expansion began in earnest during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Scotland pursued colonial and trading ventures of its own, and following the Union of England and Scotland in 1707 the overseas possessions and ambitions of the new Kingdom of Great Britain increasingly formed what became known as the British Empire.

Colonies, trading companies, naval power, settlement, conquest, diplomacy and alliances all contributed to its expansion.

The Empire left profound and often contradictory legacies.

Imperial rule contributed to the spread of the English language, parliamentary and legal institutions, administrative systems, universities, schools, transport networks and commercial connections which continue to influence many countries today.

It also involved conquest, dispossession, economic exploitation, racial discrimination, violence and the subordination of peoples who had not freely chosen foreign rule.

Different colonies experienced Empire differently, and experiences also differed greatly within individual colonies. Any serious assessment must therefore resist treating hundreds of years and dozens of societies as though they constituted a single uniform experience.

The history of slavery illustrates this complexity particularly starkly.

Britain was a major participant in the transatlantic slave trade. British merchants and colonial economies profited enormously from the enslavement and transportation of African people.

Following a long abolitionist campaign in which formerly enslaved people, religious movements, political campaigners and others played important parts, Parliament abolished the British slave trade in 1807.

The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolished slavery across much of the British Empire, although the system of compulsory “apprenticeship” meant that full emancipation for many did not follow until 1838, and slavery continued for a time in some territories outside the initial scope of the legislation.

Britain then devoted considerable diplomatic and naval resources to suppressing the international slave trade. 

The Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron intercepted slave ships and liberated many thousands of enslaved Africans.

The historical record therefore contains both Britain's extensive involvement in slavery and its later prominent role in international abolition. Neither fact cancels the other.

British rule sometimes introduced or expanded systems of education, public administration, law, communications, medicine and infrastructure. Imperial authorities also prohibited certain practices which reformers, including local reformers, regarded as abusive.

Such developments should not, however, be presented as though colonial subjects were passive recipients of British benevolence. Local communities, intellectuals, religious leaders, reformers and political movements frequently shaped these changes themselves.

Equally, infrastructure was often constructed partly to serve imperial strategic and commercial interests. The same railway, court or civil service might therefore be understood simultaneously as a lasting institution and as an instrument of colonial government.

History is rarely improved by forcing such complexities into a simple balance sheet.

The British Empire played an enormous role in both World Wars.

Millions of people from India, Africa, the Caribbean, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere served in military and civilian capacities. Their contribution was essential to the Allied war effort and forms an important part of the shared history of Britain and the modern Commonwealth.

The wars also transformed attitudes towards imperial government. Colonial peoples who had contributed greatly to common defence increasingly pressed claims to political equality, self-government and independence.

The transformation from Empire to Commonwealth accelerated dramatically after the Second World War.

The reasons were numerous: the economic and military consequences of two world wars; the growth of powerful independence movements; changing international attitudes towards colonial rule; political pressure within individual territories; and the increasing recognition of national self-determination.

British India was partitioned into the independent states of India and Pakistan in 1947. Further independence followed across Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific during the succeeding decades.

Decolonisation was peaceful in some places and accompanied by serious violence and upheaval in others.

The modern Commonwealth did not simply appear at the end of the Empire.

The Imperial Conference of 1926 recognised the self-governing Dominions as autonomous communities equal in status, and the Statute of Westminster 1931 gave important legal effect to that development.

A decisive further change occurred with the London Declaration of 1949. India wished to become a republic while remaining within the Commonwealth. Commonwealth governments agreed that republican status need not prevent membership, and King George VI was recognised as the symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and as Head of the Commonwealth.

The modern Commonwealth had emerged.

Today its 56 members are independent and equal sovereign states. Membership no longer depends upon allegiance to the British Crown or even upon former membership of the British Empire.

The Crown Society believes that the history of Empire should be studied rather than either romanticised or erased.

There are achievements worthy of recognition and injustices which demand honest acknowledgement. There are institutions inherited from Empire which continue to serve independent nations, and there are wounds whose effects remain matters of debate.

To understand the British Empire properly is not to require either inherited guilt or uncritical nostalgia. It is to recognise that history is complex, that people in every age possess moral agency, and that nations are strengthened rather than diminished by examining their past truthfully.

The transformation of a global Empire into a voluntary Commonwealth of independent nations is itself an extraordinary historical development. It offers an example of institutions changing profoundly while preserving relationships, memory and a measure of continuity.