To what extent did Britain benefit from her Empire in the Eighteenth century?

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To what extent did Britain benefit from her empire in the eighteenth century?  

The empire was an all-embracing force in the eighteenth century and the tributaries of its effects formed a strong river of influence on all aspects life in Britain. Empire shaped and became an essential part of the identity of Britain economically, politically and culturally. Indeed, it is impossible to split Britain from her empire and their dynamic encounter and exchange. As one nineteenth-century historian wrote in 1883, “The history of England is not in England, but in America and Asia.” With hindsight and taking the century as a whole, it is easy to map the impact of empire and evaluate its effects in developing all aspects of British life. The historian can see the growth and changes commercially, militarily and culturally and the watersheds for religion and national identity from which it is easy to assess whether these were benefits accordingly. However, Britain’s climb to commercial, naval and imperial hegemony was unplanned, fortuitous, contingent and at times chaotic. For the generations who lived through it, it must have been a roller coaster experience, from the highs of victory after the Seven Years’ War in 1763 to the defeat at Yorktown in 1781, and we must share in these contrasting emotions to fully appreciate the impact, especially when assessing benefit. At the same time as seeing new developments from the benefit of empire, it is important to remember the empire caused contemporary concerns, and still raises ideological tensions, over imperialism’s human cost of slavery in the West Indies and American colonies and the exploitation of the East India Company.

The key benefit of empire for contemporaries was for defence against Britain’s European rivals and the development of the fiscal-military economy through the benefits of commerce. The empire financed war though boosting government funds, with increased revenues through excises and custom duties, developing the navy and increasing the pool of human resources for the militia, thus protecting Britain from the perceived threat from France. It is all too easy to forget the instability of England and threat of her European neighbours were still considered paramount when we look back knowing the outcome in the nineteenth. Certainly, Britain saw itself as resisting claims to the empires of its European rivals rather than as a power seeking an empire of its own. This concern in most clearly manifested in the French involvement in the American War of Independence. However, it was also the case in India where the expansion of territory was due to the competition of France too. Firstly, they posed a threat in their seizure of Madras in 1746 and then in their interference with the rivalries of the Nawobs and Nizanis, with British victory in 1761. In providing Britain with the resources to fight, and taking the tension to the peripheries rather than between the English Channel, the empire staved off the threat of the French.

Commerce and the benefits of trade, however, are a more frequently glorified benefit of empire. Empire extended the markets for British exports and boosted the dynamism of Britain’s own economy in the establishment of new financial systems based on credit and the consumer economy for the new imperial goods. It was integral to the British economy and if the East India Company became insolvent it was feared that it would pull down the credit system on which public finance rested and trade depended. As 7% of the government’s total revenue came from its tea duties alone, then this was perhaps not unreasonable to claim. Moreover, profit from direct imports and exports were increased by ‘invisible’ earnings through the huge network of re-export. The commercial benefits of empire also revolutionised Britain’s consumer culture with a whole new range of consumer commodities: foods, drinks, fabrics and personal goods entered the market for all sectors of the population. Sugar for example rose from an import value of £630,000 in 1700 to £2,362,000 in 1774. Traditionally, it has been seen, that the benefit of these financial networks was to serve as a basis for expansion of industrialisation through the accumulation of capital in Britain that could drive these projects forward and that the desire for consumer items motivated the workforce. However, it was not that simple and there was a complex interplay with empire in the economic forces of that pushed industrialisation. For example, empire also created increased demand and thus supply matched this though increased industrialisation. This legacy shaped Britain for the rest of the nineteenth and twentieth century.

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Commercial benefits were probably the most enduring consequence of empire. However, the benefit was not exclusively from Britain’s direct empire and we need to temper this optimism of the benefits of empire with the realisation that a significant proportion of this was from a more ‘informal’ empire. The empire was beyond its formal authority an empire of goods. As The Spectator noted “The single Dress of a Woman of Quality is often the Product of an hundred Climates… Trade, without enlarging the British Territories, has given us a kind of additional Empire.” North America remained within this after they were independent ...

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