title: British Empire

text: In 1578, Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration. That year, Gilbert sailed for the Caribbean with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic. In 1583, he embarked on a second attempt. On this occasion, he formally claimed the harbour of the island of Newfoundland, although no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England and was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584. Later that year, Raleigh founded the Roanoke Colony on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.


title: British Empire

text: In 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended (as James I) to the English throne and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations' colonial infrastructures to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies. The British Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of joint-stock companies, most notably the East India Company, to administer colonies and overseas trade. This period, until the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after the American War of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has been referred to by some historians as the "First British Empire".


title: British Empire

text: England's early efforts at colonisation in the Americas met with mixed success. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits. Colonies on the Caribbean islands of St Lucia (1605) and Grenada (1609) rapidly folded. The first permanent English settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown by Captain John Smith, and managed by the Virginia Company; the Crown took direct control of the venture in 1624, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia. Bermuda was settled and claimed by England as a result of the 1609 shipwreck of the Virginia Company's flagship, while attempts to settle Newfoundland were largely unsuccessful. In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven by Puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims. Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive for many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland was established by English Roman Catholics (1634), Rhode Island (1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions and Connecticut (1639) for Congregationalists. England's North American holdings were further expanded by the annexation of the Dutch colony of New Netherland in 1664, following the capture of New Amsterdam, which was renamed New York. Although less financially successful than colonies in the Caribbean, these territories had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far greater numbers of English emigrants, who preferred their temperate climates.


title: British Empire

text: The British West Indies initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies. Settlements were successfully established in St. Kitts (1624), Barbados (1627) and Nevis (1628), but struggled until the "Sugar Revolution" transformed the Caribbean economy in the mid-17th century. Large sugarcane plantations were first established in the 1640s on Barbados, with assistance from Dutch merchants and Sephardic Jews fleeing Portuguese Brazil. At first, sugar was grown primarily using white indentured labour, but rising costs soon led English traders to embrace the use of imported African slaves. The enormous wealth generated by slave-produced sugar made Barbados the most successful colony in the Americas, and one of the most densely populated places in the world. This boom led to the spread of sugar cultivation across the Caribbean, financed the development of non-plantation colonies in North America, and accelerated the growth of the Atlantic slave trade, particularly the triangular trade of slaves, sugar and provisions between Africa, the West Indies and Europe.


title: British Empire

text: To ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of colonial trade remained in English hands, Parliament decreed in 1651 that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies. This led to hostilities with the United Dutch Provinces—a series of Anglo-Dutch Wars—which would eventually strengthen England's position in the Americas at the expense of the Dutch. In 1655, England annexed the island of Jamaica from the Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonising the Bahamas.


title: British Empire

text: In 1670, Charles II incorporated by royal charter the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in the area known as Rupert's Land, which would later form a large proportion of the Dominion of Canada. Forts and trading posts established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent New France.


title: British Empire

text: Two years later, the Royal African Company was granted a monopoly on the supply of slaves to the British colonies in the Caribbean. The company would transport more slaves across the Atlantic than any other, and significantly grew England's share of the trade, from 33 per cent in 1673 to 74 per cent in 1683. The removal of this monopoly between 1688 and 1712 allowed independent British slave traders to thrive, leading to a rapid escalation in the number of slaves transported. British ships carried a third of all slaves shipped across the Atlantic—approximately 3.5 million Africans—and dominated global slave trading in the 25 years preceding its abolition by Parliament in 1807 (see ). To facilitate the shipment of slaves, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25 per cent in 1650 to around 80 per cent in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10 per cent to 40 per cent over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies). The transatlantic slave trade played a pervasive role in British economic life, and became a major economic mainstay for western port cities. Ships registered in Bristol, Liverpool and London were responsible for the bulk of British slave trading. For the transported, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average mortality rate during the Middle Passage was one in seven.


title: British Empire

text: At the end of the 16th century, England and the Dutch Empire began to challenge the Portuguese Empire's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages—the English, later British, East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. The primary aim of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, an effort focused mainly on two regions: the East Indies archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India. There, they competed for trade supremacy with Portugal and with each other. Although England eclipsed the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands' more advanced financial system and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left it with a stronger position in Asia. Hostilities ceased after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Dutch William of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Dutch Republic and England. A deal between the two nations left the spice trade of the East Indies archipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability.


title: British Empire

text: Peace between England and the Netherlands in 1688 meant the two countries entered the Nine Years' War as allies, but the conflict—waged in Europe and overseas between France, Spain and the Anglo-Dutch alliance—left the English a stronger colonial power than the Dutch, who were forced to devote a larger proportion of their military budget to the costly land war in Europe. The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philip V of Spain, a grandson of the King of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for England and the other powers of Europe. In 1701, England, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted for thirteen years.


title: British Empire

text: In 1695, the Parliament of Scotland granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the Isthmus of Panama. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and affected by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland: a quarter of Scottish capital was lost in the enterprise. The episode had major political consequences, helping to persuade the government of the Kingdom of Scotland of the merits of turning the personal union with England into a political and economic one under the Kingdom of Great Britain established by the Acts of Union 1707.


title: British Empire

text: The 18th century saw the newly united Great Britain rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, with France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage. Great Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, and the Holy Roman Empire continued the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted until 1714 and was concluded by the Treaty of Utrecht. Philip V of Spain renounced his and his descendants' claim to the French throne, and Spain lost its empire in Europe. The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain Gibraltar and Menorca. Gibraltar became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean. Spain ceded the rights to the lucrative "asiento" (permission to sell African slaves in Spanish America) to Britain. With the outbreak of the Anglo-Spanish War of Jenkins' Ear in 1739, Spanish privateers attacked British merchant shipping along the Triangle Trade routes. In 1746, the Spanish and British began peace talks, with the King of Spain agreeing to stop all attacks on British shipping; however, in the Treaty of Madrid Britain lost its slave-trading rights in Latin America.


title: British Empire

text: In the East Indies, British and Dutch merchants continued to compete in spices and textiles. With textiles becoming the larger trade, by 1720, in terms of sales, the British company had overtaken the Dutch. During the middle decades of the 18th century, there were several outbreaks of military conflict on the Indian subcontinent, as the English East India Company and its French counterpart, struggled alongside local rulers to fill the vacuum that had been left by the decline of the Mughal Empire. The Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which the British defeated the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies, left the British East India Company in control of Bengal and as the major military and political power in India. France was left control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, ending French hopes of controlling India. In the following decades the British East India Company gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local rulers under the threat of force from the Presidency Armies, the vast majority of which was composed of Indian sepoys, led by British officers. The British and French struggles in India became but one theatre of the global Seven Years' War (1756–1763) involving France, Britain, and the other major European powers.


title: British Empire

text: The signing of the Treaty of Paris of 1763 had important consequences for the future of the British Empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert's Land, and the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. Along with its victory over France in India, the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's most powerful maritime power.


title: British Empire

text: During the 1760s and early 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament's attempts to govern and tax American colonists without their consent. This was summarised at the time by the slogan "No taxation without representation", a perceived violation of the guaranteed Rights of Englishmen. The American Revolution began with a rejection of Parliamentary authority and moves towards self-government. In response, Britain sent troops to reimpose direct rule, leading to the outbreak of war in 1775. The following year, in 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence proclaiming the colonies' sovereignty from the British Empire as the new United States of America. The entry of French and Spanish forces into the war tipped the military balance in the Americans' favour and after a decisive defeat at Yorktown in 1781, Britain began negotiating peace terms. American independence was acknowledged at the Peace of Paris in 1783.


title: British Empire

text: The loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by some historians as the event defining the transition between the "first" and "second" empires, in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations", published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 seemed to confirm Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.


title: British Empire

text: The war to the south influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000 defeated Loyalists had migrated from the new United States following independence. The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784. The Constitutional Act of 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the French and British communities, and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Britain, with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution.


title: British Empire

text: Tensions between Britain and the United States escalated again during the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France and boarded American ships to impress men into the Royal Navy. The United States Congress declared war, the War of 1812, and invaded Canadian territory. In response, Britain invaded the US, but the pre-war boundaries were reaffirmed by the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, ensuring Canada's future would be separate from that of the United States.


title: British Empire

text: Since 1718, transportation to the American colonies had been a penalty for various offences in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year. Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government turned to Australia. The coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by the Dutch in 1606, but there was no attempt to colonise it. In 1770 James Cook charted the eastern coast while on a scientific voyage, claimed the continent for Britain, and named it New South Wales. In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788. Unusually, Australia was claimed through proclamation. Indigenous Australians were considered too uncivilised to require treaties, and colonisation brought disease and violence that together with the deliberate dispossession of land and culture were devastating to these peoples. Britain continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840, to Tasmania until 1853 and to Western Australia until 1868. The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold, mainly because of the Victorian gold rush, making its capital Melbourne for a time the richest city in the world.


title: British Empire

text: During his voyage, Cook visited New Zealand, known to Europeans due to the 1642 voyage of the Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman. Cook claimed both the North and the South islands for the British crown in 1769 and 1770 respectively. Initially, interaction between the indigenous Maori population and European settlers was limited to the trading of goods. European settlement increased through the early decades of the 19th century, with many trading stations being established, especially in the North. In 1839, the New Zealand Company announced plans to buy large tracts of land and establish colonies in New Zealand. On 6 February 1840, Captain William Hobson and around 40 Maori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi which is considered to be New Zealand's founding document despite differing interpretations of the Maori and English versions of the text being the cause of ongoing dispute.


title: British Empire

text: The British also expanded their mercantile interests in the North Pacific. Spain and Britain had become rivals in the area, culminating in the Nootka Crisis in 1789. Both sides mobilised for war, but when France refused to support Spain it was forced to back down, leading to the Nootka Convention. The outcome was a humiliation for Spain, which practically renounced all sovereignty on the North Pacific coast. This opened the way to British expansion in the area, and a number of expeditions took place; firstly a naval expedition led by George Vancouver which explored the inlets around the Pacific North West, particularly around Vancouver Island. On land, expeditions sought to discover a river route to the Pacific for the extension of the North American fur trade. Alexander Mackenzie of the North West Company led the first, starting out in 1792, and a year a later he became the first European to reach the Pacific overland north of the Rio Grande, reaching the ocean near present-day Bella Coola. This preceded the Lewis and Clark Expedition by twelve years. Shortly thereafter, Mackenzie's companion, John Finlay, founded the first permanent European settlement in British Columbia, Fort St. John. The North West Company sought further exploration and backed expeditions by David Thompson, starting in 1797, and later by Simon Fraser. These pushed into the wilderness territories of the Rocky Mountains and Interior Plateau to the Strait of Georgia on the Pacific Coast, expanding British North America westward.


title: British Empire

text: Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations. It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was at risk: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe.


title: British Empire

text: The Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones in which Britain invested large amounts of capital and resources to win. French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy, which won a decisive victory over a French Imperial Navy-Spanish Navy fleet at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Overseas colonies were attacked and occupied, including those of the Netherlands, which was annexed by Napoleon in 1810. France was finally defeated by a coalition of European armies in 1815. Britain was again the beneficiary of peace treaties: France ceded the Ionian Islands, Malta (which it had occupied in 1798), Mauritius, St Lucia, the Seychelles, and Tobago; Spain ceded Trinidad; the Netherlands ceded Guyana, Ceylon and the Cape Colony, while the Danish ceded Heligoland. Britain returned Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and Réunion to France; Menorca to Spain; Danish West Indies to Denmark and Java and Suriname to the Netherlands.


title: British Empire

text: With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, goods produced by slavery became less important to the British economy. Added to this was the cost of suppressing regular slave rebellions. With support from the British abolitionist movement, Parliament enacted the Slave Trade Act in 1807, which abolished the slave trade in the empire. In 1808, Sierra Leone Colony was designated an official British colony for freed slaves. Parliamentary reform in 1832 saw the influence of the West India Committee decline. The Slavery Abolition Act, passed the following year, abolished slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834, finally bringing the Empire into line with the law in the UK (with the exception of the territories administered by the East India Company and Ceylon, where slavery was ended in 1844). Under the Act, slaves were granted full emancipation after a period of four to six years of "apprenticeship". Facing further opposition from abolitionists, the apprenticeship system was abolished in 1838. The British government compensated slave-owners.


title: British Empire

text: Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial century" by some historians, around of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire. Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in Central Asia. Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the "Pax Britannica", and a foreign policy of "splendid isolation". Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been described by some historians as an "Informal Empire".


title: British Empire

text: British imperial strength was underpinned by the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, called the All Red Line.


title: British Empire

text: The East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia. The Company's army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to co-operate in arenas outside India: the eviction of the French from Egypt (1799), the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Penang Island (1786), Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824), and the defeat of Burma (1826).


title: British Empire

text: From its base in India, the Company had been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to Qing China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by China in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China. In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War, and resulted in the seizure by Britain of Hong Kong Island, at that time a minor settlement, and other Treaty Ports including Shanghai.


title: British Empire

text: During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the British Crown began to assume an increasingly large role in the affairs of the Company. A series of Acts of Parliament were passed, including the Regulating Act of 1773, Pitt's India Act of 1784 and the Charter Act of 1813 which regulated the Company's affairs and established the sovereignty of the Crown over the territories that it had acquired. The Company's eventual end was precipitated by the Indian Rebellion in 1857, a conflict that had begun with the mutiny of sepoys, Indian troops under British officers and discipline. The rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides. The following year the British government dissolved the company and assumed direct control over India through the Government of India Act 1858, establishing the British Raj, where an appointed governor-general administered India and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India. India became the empire's most valuable possession, "the Jewel in the Crown", and was the most important source of Britain's strength.


title: British Empire

text: A series of serious crop failures in the late 19th century led to widespread famines on the subcontinent in which it is estimated that over 15 million people died. The East India Company had failed to implement any coordinated policy to deal with the famines during its period of rule. Later, under direct British rule, commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect.


title: British Empire

text: During the 19th century, Britain and the Russian Empire vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the declining Ottoman Empire, Qajar dynasty and Qing dynasty. This rivalry in Central Asia came to be known as the "Great Game". As far as Britain was concerned, defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkey demonstrated its imperial ambitions and capabilities and stoked fears in Britain of an overland invasion of India. In 1839, Britain moved to pre-empt this by invading Afghanistan, but the First Anglo-Afghan War was a disaster for Britain.


title: British Empire

text: When Russia invaded the Ottoman Balkans in 1853, fears of Russian dominance in the Mediterranean and the Middle East led Britain and France to enter the war in support of the Ottoman Empire and invade the Crimean Peninsula to destroy Russian naval capabilities. The ensuing Crimean War (1854–1856), which involved new techniques of modern warfare, was the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial power during the "Pax Britannica" and was a resounding defeat for Russia. The situation remained unresolved in Central Asia for two more decades, with Britain annexing Baluchistan in 1876 and Russia annexing Kirghizia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. For a while, it appeared that another war would be inevitable, but the two countries reached an agreement on their respective spheres of influence in the region in 1878 and on all outstanding matters in 1907 with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente. The destruction of the Imperial Russian Navy by the Imperial Japanese Navy at the Battle of Tsushima during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905 limited its threat to the British.


title: British Empire

text: The Dutch East India Company had founded the Dutch Cape Colony on the southern tip of Africa in 1652 as a way station for its ships travelling to and from its colonies in the East Indies. Britain formally acquired the colony, and its large Afrikaner (or Boer) population in 1806, having occupied it in 1795 to prevent its falling into French hands during the Flanders Campaign. British immigration to the Cape Colony began to rise after 1820, and pushed thousands of Boers, resentful of British rule, northwards to found their own—mostly short-lived—independent republics, during the Great Trek of the late 1830s and early 1840s. In the process the Voortrekkers clashed repeatedly with the British, who had their own agenda with regard to colonial expansion in South Africa and to the various native African polities, including those of the Sotho people and the Zulu Kingdom. Eventually, the Boers established two republics that had a longer lifespan: the South African Republic or Transvaal Republic (1852–1877; 1881–1902) and the Orange Free State (1854–1902). In 1902 Britain occupied both republics, concluding a treaty with the two Boer Republics following the Second Boer War (1899–1902).


title: British Empire

text: In 1869 the Suez Canal opened under Napoleon III, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Indian Ocean. Initially the Canal was opposed by the British; but once opened, its strategic value was quickly recognised and became the "jugular vein of the Empire". In 1875, the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Isma'il Pasha's 44 per cent shareholding in the Suez Canal for £4 million (equivalent to £ in ). Although this did not grant outright control of the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882. Although Britain controlled the Khedivate of Egypt into the 20th century, it was officially a vassal state of the Ottoman Empire and not part of the British Empire. The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position, but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople, which made the Canal officially neutral territory.


title: British Empire

text: With competitive French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region undermining orderly colonisation of tropical Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 was held to regulate the competition between the European powers in what was called the "Scramble for Africa" by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims. The scramble continued into the 1890s, and caused Britain to reconsider its decision in 1885 to withdraw from Sudan. A joint force of British and Egyptian troops defeated the Mahdist Army in 1896 and rebuffed an attempted French invasion at Fashoda in 1898. Sudan was nominally made an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, but a British colony in reality.


title: British Empire

text: British gains in Southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion in Southern Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo" railway linking the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich south of the continent. During the 1880s and 1890s, Rhodes, with his privately owned British South Africa Company, occupied and annexed territories named after him, Rhodesia.


title: British Empire

text: The path to independence for the white colonies of the British Empire began with the 1839 Durham Report, which proposed unification and self-government for Upper and Lower Canada, as a solution to political unrest which had erupted in armed rebellions in 1837. This began with the passing of the Act of Union in 1840, which created the Province of Canada. Responsible government was first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other British North American colonies. With the passage of the British North America Act, 1867 by the British Parliament, the Province of Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formed into Canada, a confederation enjoying full self-government with the exception of international relations. Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901. The term "dominion status" was officially introduced at the 1907 Imperial Conference.


title: British Empire

text: The last decades of the 19th century saw concerted political campaigns for Irish home rule. Ireland had been united with Britain into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the Act of Union 1800 after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and had suffered a severe famine between 1845 and 1852. Home rule was supported by the British Prime minister, William Gladstone, who hoped that Ireland might follow in Canada's footsteps as a Dominion within the empire, but his 1886 Home Rule bill was defeated in Parliament. Although the bill, if passed, would have granted Ireland less autonomy within the UK than the Canadian provinces had within their own federation, many MPs feared that a partially independent Ireland might pose a security threat to Great Britain or mark the beginning of the break-up of the empire. A second Home Rule bill was defeated for similar reasons. A third bill was passed by Parliament in 1914, but not implemented because of the outbreak of the First World War leading to the 1916 Easter Rising.


title: British Empire

text: By the turn of the 20th century, fears had begun to grow in Britain that it would no longer be able to defend the metropole and the entirety of the empire while at the same time maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation". Germany was rapidly rising as a military and industrial power and was now seen as the most likely opponent in any future war. Recognising that it was overstretched in the Pacific and threatened at home by the Imperial German Navy, Britain formed an alliance with Japan in 1902 and with its old enemies France and Russia in 1904 and 1907, respectively.


title: British Empire

text: Britain's fears of war with Germany were realised in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. Britain quickly invaded and occupied most of Germany's overseas colonies in Africa. In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and German Samoa respectively. Plans for a post-war division of the Ottoman Empire, which had joined the war on Germany's side, were secretly drawn up by Britain and France under the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement. This agreement was not divulged to the Sharif of Mecca, who the British had been encouraging to launch an Arab revolt against their Ottoman rulers, giving the impression that Britain was supporting the creation of an independent Arab state.


title: British Empire

text: The British declaration of war on Germany and its allies committed the colonies and Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support. Over 2.5 million men served in the armies of the Dominions, as well as many thousands of volunteers from the Crown colonies. The contributions of Australian and New Zealand troops during the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national consciousness at home and marked a watershed in the transition of Australia and New Zealand from colonies to nations in their own right. The countries continue to commemorate this occasion on Anzac Day. Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridge in a similar light. The important contribution of the Dominions to the war effort was recognised in 1917 by the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George when he invited each of the Dominion Prime Ministers to join an Imperial War Cabinet to co-ordinate imperial policy.


title: British Empire

text: Under the terms of the concluding Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, the empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of and 13 million new subjects. The colonies of Germany and the Ottoman Empire were distributed to the Allied powers as League of Nations mandates. Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togoland, and Tanganyika. The Dominions themselves acquired mandates of their own: the Union of South Africa gained South West Africa (modern-day Namibia), Australia gained New Guinea, and New Zealand Western Samoa. Nauru was made a combined mandate of Britain and the two Pacific Dominions.


title: British Empire

text: The changing world order that the war had brought about, in particular the growth of the United States and Japan as naval powers, and the rise of independence movements in India and Ireland, caused a major reassessment of British imperial policy. Forced to choose between alignment with the United States or Japan, Britain opted not to renew its Anglo-Japanese Alliance and instead signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, where Britain accepted naval parity with the United States. This decision was the source of much debate in Britain during the 1930s as militaristic governments took hold in Germany and Japan helped in part by the Great Depression, for it was feared that the empire could not survive a simultaneous attack by both nations. The issue of the empire's security was a serious concern in Britain, as it was vital to the British economy.


title: British Empire

text: In 1919, the frustrations caused by delays to Irish home rule led the MPs of Sinn Féin, a pro-independence party that had won a majority of the Irish seats in the 1918 British general election, to establish an independent parliament in Dublin, at which Irish independence was declared. The Irish Republican Army simultaneously began a guerrilla war against the British administration. The Irish War of Independence ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown. Northern Ireland, consisting of six of the 32 Irish counties which had been established as a devolved region under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, immediately exercised its option under the treaty to retain its existing status within the United Kingdom.


title: British Empire

text: A similar struggle began in India when the Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy the demand for independence. Concerns over communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by the Rowlatt Acts. This led to tension, particularly in the Punjab region, where repressive measures culminated in the Amritsar Massacre. In Britain, public opinion was divided over the morality of the massacre, between those who saw it as having saved India from anarchy, and those who viewed it with revulsion. The non-cooperation movement was called off in March 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident, and discontent continued to simmer for the next 25 years.


title: British Empire

text: In 1922, Egypt, which had been declared a British protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War, was granted formal independence, though it continued to be a British client state until 1954. British troops remained stationed in Egypt until the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936, under which it was agreed that the troops would withdraw but continue to occupy and defend the Suez Canal zone. In return, Egypt was assisted in joining the League of Nations. Iraq, a British mandate since 1920, gained membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from Britain in 1932. In Palestine, Britain was presented with the problem of mediating between the Arabs and increasing numbers of Jews. The Balfour Declaration, which had been incorporated into the terms of the mandate, stated that a national home for the Jewish people would be established in Palestine, and Jewish immigration allowed up to a limit that would be determined by the mandatory power. This led to increasing conflict with the Arab population, who openly revolted in 1936. As the threat of war with Germany increased during the 1930s, Britain judged the support of Arabs as more important than the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and shifted to a pro-Arab stance, limiting Jewish immigration and in turn triggering a Jewish insurgency.


title: British Empire

text: The right of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy, independent of Britain, was recognised at the 1923 Imperial Conference. Britain's request for military assistance from the Dominions at the outbreak of the Chanak Crisis the previous year had been turned down by Canada and South Africa, and Canada had refused to be bound by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. After pressure from the Irish Free State and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference issued the Balfour Declaration of 1926, declaring the Dominions to be "autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another" within a "British Commonwealth of Nations". This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster. The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent. Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression. In 1937 the Irish Free State introduced a republican constitution renaming itself "Ireland".


title: British Empire

text: Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa. All soon declared war on Germany. While Britain continued to regard Ireland as still within the British Commonwealth, Ireland chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war.


title: British Empire

text: After the Fall of France in June 1940, Britain and the empire stood alone against Germany, until the German invasion of Greece on 7 April 1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill successfully lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military aid from the United States, but Roosevelt was not yet ready to ask Congress to commit the country to war. In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met and signed the Atlantic Charter, which included the statement that "the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live" should be respected. This wording was ambiguous as to whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany and Italy, or the peoples colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by the British, Americans, and nationalist movements.


title: British Empire

text: For Churchill, the entry of the United States into the war was the "greatest joy". He felt that Britain was now assured of victory, but failed to recognise that the "many disasters, immeasurable costs and tribulations [which he knew] lay ahead" in December 1941 would have permanent consequences for the future of the empire. The manner in which British forces were rapidly defeated in the Far East irreversibly harmed Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power, including, particularly, the Fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar. The realisation that Britain could not defend its entire empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States and, ultimately, the 1951 ANZUS Pact. The war weakened the empire in other ways: undermining Britain's control of politics in India, inflicting long-term economic damage, and irrevocably changing geopolitics by pushing the Soviet Union and the United States to the centre of the global stage.


title: British Empire

text: Though Britain and the empire emerged victorious from the Second World War, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, was in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, who now held the balance of global power. Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a US$4.33 billion loan from the United States, the last installment of which was repaid in 2006. At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations. The situation was complicated further by the increasing Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union. In principle, both nations were opposed to European colonialism. In practice, American anti-communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, and therefore the United States supported the continued existence of the British Empire to keep Communist expansion in check. At first British politicians believed it would be possible to maintain Britain's role as a world power at the head of a re-imagined Commonwealth, but by 1960 they were forced to recognise that there was an irresistible "wind of change" blowing. Their priorities changed to maintaining an extensive zone of British influence and ensuring that stable, non-Communist governments were established in former colonies. In this context, while other European powers such as France and Portugal waged costly and unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact, Britain generally adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies, although violence occurred in Malaya, Kenya and Palestine. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to 5 million, 3 million of whom were in Hong Kong.


title: British Empire

text: The pro-decolonisation Labour government, elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the empire: Indian independence. India's two major political parties—the Indian National Congress (led by Mahatma Gandhi) and the Muslim League (led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah)—had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed as to how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified secular Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate Islamic state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest and the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy during 1946 led Attlee to promise independence no later than 30 June 1948. When the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent, the newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, hastily brought forward the date to 15 August 1947. The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan. Millions of Muslims crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus vice versa, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of the British Raj, and Sri Lanka gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka became members of the Commonwealth, while Burma chose not to join.


title: British Empire

text: The British Mandate in Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India. The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following the Holocaust, while Arabs were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. Frustrated by the intractability of the problem, attacks by Jewish paramilitary organisations and the increasing cost of maintaining its military presence, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve. The UN General Assembly subsequently voted for a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. It was immediately followed by the outbreak of a civil war between the Arabs and Jews of Palestine, and British forces withdrew amid the fighting. The British Mandate for Palestine officially terminated at midnight on 15 May 1948 as the State of Israel declared independence and the 1948 Arab-Israeli War broke out, during which the territory of the former Mandate was partitioned between Israel and the surrounding Arab states. Amid the fighting, British forces continued to withdraw from Israel, with the last British troops departing from Haifa on 30 June 1948.


title: British Empire

text: Following the surrender of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin. The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malaysian Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted. The Malayan Emergency, as it was called, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-majority Singapore was expelled from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations and became an independent city-state. Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union.


title: British Empire

text: In the 1951 general election, the Conservative Party returned to power in Britain under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power relied on the continued existence of the empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India. Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would be granted self-determination by 1955, with independence to follow. Sudan was granted independence on 1 January 1956.


title: British Empire

text: In July 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of Anthony Eden, who had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, was to collude with France to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the canal. Eden infuriated US President Dwight D. Eisenhower by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion. Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after it threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency. Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objectives, UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned.


title: British Empire

text: The Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage and its end as a first-rate power, demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States. The events at Suez wounded British national pride, leading one Member of Parliament (MP) to describe it as "Britain's Waterloo" and another to suggest that the country had become an "American satellite". Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen Britain's political leaders after Suez where they "went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing", from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.


title: British Empire

text: While the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse. Britain again deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval, as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States. Although Britain granted Kuwait independence in 1961, it continued to maintain a military presence in the Middle East for another decade. On 16 January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound, Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Defence Secretary Denis Healey announced that British Armed Forces troops would be withdrawn from major military bases East of Suez, which included the ones in the Middle East, and primarily from Malaysia and Singapore by the end of 1971, instead of 1975 as earlier planned. By that time over 50,000 British military personnel were still stationed in the Far East, including 30,000 in Singapore. The British granted independence to the Maldives in 1965 but continued to station a garrison there until 1976, withdrew from Aden in 1967, and granted independence to Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates in 1971.


title: British Empire

text: Macmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of "the wind of change blowing through this continent". Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly. To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the 1950s—Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya—were added nearly ten times that number during the 1960s.


title: British Empire

text: Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968. British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process. Kenyan independence was preceded by the eight-year Mau Mau uprising, in which tens of thousands of suspected rebels were interned by the colonial government in detention camps. In Rhodesia, the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the white minority resulted in a civil war that lasted until the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, which set the terms for recognised independence in 1980, as the new nation of Zimbabwe.


title: British Empire

text: In Cyprus, a guerrilla war waged by the Greek Cypriot organisation EOKA against British rule, was ended in 1959 by the London and Zürich Agreements, which resulted in Cyprus being granted independence in 1960. The UK retained the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia as sovereign base areas. The Mediterranean colony of Malta was amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964 and became the country of Malta, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain.


title: British Empire

text: Most of the UK's Caribbean territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two largest members. Jamaica attained independence in 1962, as did Trinidad and Tobago. Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands, including the Bahamas, in the 1970s and 1980s, but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence. The British Virgin Islands, The Cayman Islands and Montserrat opted to retain ties with Britain, while Guyana achieved independence in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.


title: British Empire

text: British Overseas Territories in the Pacific acquired independence in the 1970s beginning with Fiji in 1970 and ending with Vanuatu in 1980. Vanuatu's independence was delayed because of political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France. Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu became Commonwealth realms.


title: British Empire

text: By 1981, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts, the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve in defending its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire. Britain's successful military response to retake the Falkland Islands during the ensuing Falklands War contributed to reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world power.


title: British Empire

text: The 1980s saw Canada, Australia, and New Zealand sever their final constitutional links with Britain. Although granted legislative independence by the Statute of Westminster 1931, vestigial constitutional links had remained in place. The British Parliament retained the power to amend key Canadian constitutional statutes, meaning that effectively an act of the British Parliament was required to make certain changes to the Canadian Constitution. The British Parliament had the power to pass laws extending to Canada at Canadian request. Although no longer able to pass any laws that would apply as Australian Commonwealth law, the British Parliament retained the power to legislate for the individual Australian states. With regard to New Zealand, the British Parliament retained the power to pass legislation applying to New Zealand with the New Zealand Parliament's consent. In 1982, the last legal link between Canada and Britain was severed by the Canada Act 1982, which was passed by the British parliament, formally patriating the Canadian Constitution. The act ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution. Similarly, the Australia Act 1986 (effective 3 March 1986) severed the constitutional link between Britain and the Australian states, while New Zealand's Constitution Act 1986 (effective 1 January 1987) reformed the constitution of New Zealand to sever its constitutional link with Britain.


title: British Empire

text: On 1 January 1984, Brunei, Britain's last remaining Asian protectorate, was granted independence. Independence had been delayed due to the opposition of the Sultan, who had preferred British protection.


title: British Empire

text: In September 1982 the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese Communist government, on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong. Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking and 1860 Convention of Peking, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula had been respectively ceded to Britain "in perpetuity", but the majority of the colony consisted of the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99-year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997. Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China. A deal was reached in 1984—under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would become a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China. The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many, including Charles, Prince of Wales, who was in attendance, "the end of Empire".


title: British Empire

text: Britain retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles. In 1983, the British Nationality Act 1981 renamed the existing Crown Colonies as "British Dependent Territories", and in 2002 they were renamed the British Overseas Territories. Most former British colonies and protectorates are members of the Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2.2 billion people. Fifteen Commonwealth realms voluntarily continue to share the British monarch, King Charles III, as their head of state. These fifteen nations are distinct and equal legal entities – the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.


title: British Empire

text: Decades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on the independent nations that arose from the British Empire. The empire established the use of the English language in regions around the world. Today it is the primary language of up to 460 million people and is spoken by about 1.5 billion as a first, second or foreign language. Individual and team sports developed in Britain, particularly football, cricket, lawn tennis, and golf were exported. British missionaries who travelled around the globe often in advance of soldiers and civil servants spread Protestantism (including Anglicanism) to all continents. The British Empire provided refuge for religiously persecuted continental Europeans for hundreds of years.


title: British Empire

text: Political boundaries drawn by the British did not always reflect homogeneous ethnicities or religions, contributing to conflicts in formerly colonised areas. The British Empire was responsible for large migrations of peoples. Millions left the British Isles, with the founding settler colonist populations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand coming mainly from Britain and Ireland. Tensions remain between the white settler populations of these countries and their indigenous minorities, and between white settler minorities and indigenous majorities in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Settlers in Ireland from Great Britain have left their mark in the form of divided nationalist and unionist communities in Northern Ireland. Millions of people moved to and from British colonies, with large numbers of Overseas Indian people emigrating to other parts of the empire, such as Malaysia and Fiji, and Overseas Chinese people to Malaysia, Singapore and the Caribbean. The demographics of the United Kingdom itself were changed after the Second World War owing to immigration to Britain from its former colonies.


title: British Empire

text: In the 19th century, innovation in Britain led to revolutionary changes in manufacturing, the development of factory systems, and the growth of transportation by railway and steamship. British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway stations and government buildings, can be seen in many cities that were once part of the British Empire. The British choice of system of measurement, the imperial system, continues to be used in some countries in various ways. The convention of driving on the left-hand side of the road has been retained in much of the former empire.


title: British Empire

text: The Westminster system of parliamentary democracy has served as the template for the governments for many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems. International commercial contracts are often based on English common law. The British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council still serves as the highest court of appeal for twelve former colonies.


title: British Empire

text: Historians' approaches to understanding the British Empire are diverse and evolving. Two key sites of debate over recent decades have been the impact of post-colonial studies, which seek to critically re-evaluate the history of imperialism, and the continued relevance of historians Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, whose work greatly influenced imperial historiography during the 1950s and 1960s. In addition, differing assessments of the empire's legacy remain relevant to debates over recent history and politics, such as the Anglo-American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Britain's role and identity in the contemporary world.


title: British Empire

text: Historians such as Caroline Elkins have argued against perceptions of the British Empire as a primarily liberalising and modernising enterprise, criticising its widespread use of violence and emergency laws to maintain power. Common criticisms of the empire include the use of detention camps in its colonies, massacres of indigenous peoples, and famine-response policies. Some scholars, including Amartya Sen, assert that British policies worsened the famines in India that killed millions during British rule. Conversely, historians such as Niall Ferguson say that the economic and institutional development the British Empire brought resulted in a net benefit to its colonies. Other historians treat its legacy as varied and ambiguous. Public attitudes towards the empire within Britain remain somewhat positive.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: Peacemaker is an American superhero television series created by James Gunn for the streaming service HBO Max, based on the DC Comics character of the same name. It is the first DC Extended Universe (DCEU) television series and a spin-off from the 2021 film "The Suicide Squad". Set after the events of the film, the series further explores jingoistic killer Christopher Smith / Peacemaker. It is produced by The Safran Company and Troll Court Entertainment in association with Warner Bros. Television, with Gunn serving as showrunner.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: John Cena stars as the title character, reprising his role from "The Suicide Squad", with Danielle Brooks, Freddie Stroma, Chukwudi Iwuji, Jennifer Holland, Steve Agee, and Robert Patrick also starring. Gunn conceived "Peacemaker" after noting Cena's strength as a dramatic actor while filming "The Suicide Squad", and wrote all eight episodes while completing the film during the COVID-19 pandemic. HBO Max ordered "Peacemaker" straight-to-series in September 2020, and additional casting took place over the following months. Filming began in Vancouver, Canada, in January 2021, with Gunn directing five episodes. Production ended in July. Gunn chose to use hair metal songs for the series' soundtrack, including "Do Ya Wanna Taste It" by Wig Wam for the opening titles; the title sequence features the series' cast performing a choreographed dance number.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: "Peacemaker" premiered on HBO Max on January 13, 2022, with its first three episodes. The rest of the series was released weekly until February 17. Each episode received higher viewership than the last, with the season finale breaking the record for highest single day viewership of an HBO Max original episode. The series has received positive reviews, with praise going to Cena's performance and Gunn's directing and writing. A second season was ordered in February 2022, with Gunn set to write and direct all episodes. Additionally, several other "The Suicide Squad" spin-off series featuring characters from the film and "Peacemaker" are in development.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: After recovering from the injuries he suffered during the events of "The Suicide Squad" (2021), Christopher Smith / Peacemaker is forced to join the mysterious A.R.G.U.S. black ops squad "Project Butterfly". They are on a mission to identify and eliminate parasitic butterfly-like creatures who have taken over human bodies around the world.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: Viola Davis reprises her DCEU film role as Amanda Waller in an uncredited cameo appearance, as do Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry / Aquaman and Ezra Miller as Barry Allen / The Flash. Justice League members Clark Kent / Superman and Diana Prince / Wonder Woman also appear, portrayed by stand-ins with their faces obscured. Additionally, Dee Bradley Baker voices Peacemaker's pet bald eagle, Eagly, and Stephen Blackehart voices Charlie the Gorilla.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: A second season was officially announced in February 2022, with James Gunn set to write and direct all episodes. He said it would explore the repercussions, good and bad, of the first season's events. After the surprise cancellation of DC's "Batgirl" film by Warner Bros. Discovery executives in August, Gunn said the second season of "Peacemaker" was "safe," and would begin filming in 2023.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: While completing work on "The Suicide Squad" (2021) in August 2020, during a COVID-19 lockdown, writer and director James Gunn began writing a spin-off television series centered on the origins of Peacemaker, a character portrayed by John Cena in the film. Gunn said he did this "mostly for fun", and mentioned the idea to "The Suicide Squad" producer Peter Safran as something he would like to pursue. When DC Films later asked Safran about developing a spin-off series based on "The Suicide Squad" he knew that Gunn would say yes to making a Peacemaker series. There were initial discussions about what platform the series should be released through, with the pay television channel HBO and the streaming service HBO Max being two options. The series ultimately went to HBO Max, and Gunn felt this was because it was a new streaming service that needed content and was willing to give Gunn the budget he wanted for the series. DC Films president Walter Hamada later explained that the studio was working with the filmmakers of all its upcoming film slate to try create interconnected spin-off television series for HBO Max based on those films.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: HBO Max ordered "Peacemaker" straight-to-series in September 2020, with Gunn writing all eight episodes of the first season and directing five of them. Gunn and Safran were set as executive producers, with Cena as co-executive producer. The series is produced by Gunn's Troll Court Entertainment and The Safran Company in conjunction with Warner Bros. Television. Matt Miller joined as an additional executive producer in December. In August 2021, Gunn said he wanted to make a second season and was committed to doing so if the series was renewed. He reiterated this after the series premiered in January 2022, despite he and Cena not yet having deals to return for a second season and Gunn wanting to take a break after a busy few years. Gunn did not formally agree to make a second season until he had worked out what he wanted the overall character arcs to be, as he and Cena did not want to agree to something that they would not love to make. HBO Max officially announced the second season in February, with Gunn set to write and direct all episodes.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: During the filming of "The Suicide Squad", particularly for the scene where Peacemaker attempts to kill Ratcatcher 2, Gunn came to feel that Cena was a much stronger dramatic actor than he was considered to be after previously being known primarily as a professional wrestler and comedic actor. Gunn felt he would be able to show more of this dramatic side to Cena in a story focused on Peacemaker, and also felt the character had not been explored or developed as much as other characters in "The Suicide Squad". He eventually decided to write a television series starring the character. Gunn had never worked in television before and approached the project using his experience of writing film scripts and his knowledge of television series that he had seen. He saw the difference between film and television as the former needing to be "more cut and dried" due to the limited runtime while the latter has more time to explore complicated characters and relationships. A particular influence on the series was "Better Call Saul", with Gunn drawing parallels between that series' protagonist, Saul Goodman, and Peacemaker.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: Gunn took eight weeks to write the first season, during a break between his work on "The Suicide Squad" and Marvel Studios' "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" (2023). He mostly wrote it in order, with the first two sequences he came up with on the first day of writing being the opening hospital scene and the dance number that is the opening title sequence. "Peacemaker" extends the world that Gunn built for "The Suicide Squad", taking place after the film's post-credit scene which reveals that Peacemaker survived an apparently fatal gunshot wound from earlier in the film. Gunn said the series was an opportunity to explore current world issues through the title character, and to expand on his relationship with his father that is hinted at in the film. He said the story of the first season was about Peacemaker coming to terms with the difference between his ideals and who he actually is, with the character realizing that his identity is based on his childhood trauma and his treatment by his father. Gunn was not sure initially if the character would choose to fight or join the villains at the end of the season, but realized while making it that the series lent itself to being a redemption story. He did not want the villains, the Butterflies, to have a goal that was "thoroughly evil" and instead decided that they wanted to save humanity, despite being "mind-controlling aliens", from its "anti-science" mindset and populist leaders. Gunn said the "anti-science" line was more of a reference to climate change deniers than anti-vaxxers since debates about the COVID-19 vaccine were only just beginning when the season was being made. The scenes in which Peacemaker and Vigilante have an "elaborate target practice" where they shoot and blow-up things in the woods was inspired by Gunn doing similar things with his friends as a child. Gunn added a post-credits scene to the end of each episode as a way to reward fans who watched the full credits every time, with each scene featuring unused footage from the episode. He compared the idea of having a joke after the credits to the end scenes of "Rick and Morty".


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: Like "The Suicide Squad", the series features graphic violence and profanity, and HBO Max gave Gunn some notes on the abundant use of the word "fuck" as well as a specific moment in the sixth episode that they were concerned about but that Gunn insisted on keeping. Other notes that Gunn received included questions about his references to certain characters, for instance Bat-Mite who is now canonically part of the DCEU due to this series referencing him; Gunn acknowledged these questions but was mostly able to make the references that he wanted to make, and was never required to make any specific connections to other projects or set-up future DCEU stories. Gunn did say that a character from the series would appear in an upcoming DCEU film, and the fourth episode includes a newspaper headline about the Intergang's activities in Kahndaq, referencing the events of "Black Adam" (2022). Members of the Justice League also make cameo appearances in the season finale, which caused some concerns for Warner Bros. due to the ramifications it had for the DCEU, but they ultimately allowed it.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: With the series order in September 2020, John Cena was confirmed to be reprising his role as Peacemaker from "The Suicide Squad". The next month, Gunn's close friend Steve Agee joined the series as John Economos, also returning from the film. In November, Gunn's girlfriend Jennifer Holland joined as her "The Suicide Squad" character Emilia Harcourt, alongside Danielle Brooks as Leota Adebayo, Robert Patrick as Auggie Smith, and Chris Conrad as Adrian Chase / Vigilante. Holland was surprised that Gunn brought her character back for the series, believing that her part in "The Suicide Squad" would be a short one-off role. Chukwudi Iwuji joined the cast as Clemson Murn in December. One of Gunn's favorite parts of making the series was being able work closely with Holland and Agee, and he soon became close friends with other members of the cast as well, with Gunn going on to cast Iwuji in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3".


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: Several recurring guests were also cast in December: Lochlyn Munro as Larry Fitzgibbon, Annie Chang as Detective Sophie Song, and Christopher Heyerdahl as Captain Locke. Munro was cast after Gunn saw his audition and remembered that Munro had been one of his choices for the role of Shaggy Rogers in "Scooby-Doo" (2002) prior to Matthew Lillard's casting for that film. In February 2021, several more recurring roles were cast: Elizabeth Ludlow as Keeya, Rizwan Manji as Jamil, Nhut Le as Judomaster, and Alison Araya and Lenny Jacobson as the couple Amber and Evan. In late May, Freddie Stroma was cast to replace Conrad as Adrian Chase / Vigilante, after Conrad left the series due to creative differences. The series' premiere revealed that Viola Davis reprises her DCEU role as Amanda Waller, while Dee Bradley Baker voices Peacemaker's pet bald eagle, Eagly, after also voicing Ratcatcher 2's pet rat Sebastian in "The Suicide Squad". Stephen Blackehart, who made cameo appearances in many of Gunn's previous films including "The Suicide Squad", voices the possessed gorilla Charlie.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: Gunn knew that the series did not have the budget to allow the Justice League to fight in the final battle, so he always intended for them to "show up late". He also did not expect the actual Justice League actors to reprise their roles in the series, other than Jason Momoa as Arthur Curry / Aquaman. Gunn had known Momoa for a long time and Safran produces the DCEU "Aquaman" films, so they talked to Momoa early on and revealed that Peacemaker would claim that Aquaman "fucks fish" as a running joke in the series. Momoa thought this was funny and agreed to appear. Gunn later heard that Ezra Miller was a fan of his films and contacted the actor about reprising their role as Barry Allen / The Flash as well. The other Justice League members—Clark Kent / Superman, Diana Prince / Wonder Woman, Bruce Wayne / Batman, and Victor Stone / Cyborg—were portrayed by stand-ins. Warner Bros. later asked for Batman and Cyborg to be removed, which Gunn said may have been due to upcoming DCEU projects.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: By early November 2020, Gunn had arrived in Canada for a two-week quarantine before starting production on the series. Filming began on January 15, 2021, in Vancouver, Canada, under the working title "The Scriptures", with Michael Bonvillain serving as cinematographer. Gunn chose to film in Vancouver because he wanted the series to be set in the Pacific Northwest, and because he felt the production would be safer there because Canada was supposedly managing the pandemic better than the United States. Gunn directed five of the series' episodes, with Jody Hill, Rosemary Rodriguez, and Brad Anderson each directing one.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: One of the first scenes that the production filmed was the post-credits scene for "The Suicide Squad" that sets up the beginning of "Peacemaker". Davis's first appearance as Waller in the series is on a Zoom call, but rather than have her make a Zoom call to the set in Vancouver the production went to Davis in Los Angeles to film her part. The first five episodes were filmed first, and Conrad had already filmed five-and-a-half episodes as Vigilante when he left the series. Gunn re-shot all of those scenes with Stroma after the latter was hired to replace Conrad, at the same time as the last three episodes were filmed. The sixth episode was filmed last because Gunn initially did not plan to direct it himself, but ultimately he "couldn't let it go" and it became his favorite episode of the season. Filming for the first seven episodes took around 12 to 15 days each, and the finale took 21 or 22 days. This was mostly due to the finale requiring night shooting for which there was limited filming time each night. Production on the first season lasted 131 days total, and wrapped on July 11. Gunn later filmed Miller's cameo as the Flash on the set of "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3", with that film's crew. Marvel allowed this as a favor to DC since Iwuji's screen test for "Vol. 3" was filmed on the set of "Peacemaker" with the series' crew.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: Gunn wrote the dance number for the series' opening titles into the script because he thought it would be funny, and because he wanted to tell the audience that this would be different from other superhero television series and they should expect to be surprised. The script describes the dance sequence as "the greatest opening credits scene of all time" and "the weirdest dance you've ever seen and everyone in it is completely and 100 percent serious". Gunn hoped that people would be interested enough in the sequence that they would not use the "Skip Intro" button that streaming services use since he felt it was important that viewers see the names of everyone who worked on the series.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: The dance number was filmed in the middle of the series' filming schedule over one day in a high school auditorium. It features the series' main cast as well as guest stars from several episodes, including Rizwan Manji, who traveled to Canada and went through two weeks of quarantine for a third time just to be in the sequence. Gunn had originally planned for the sequence to be set in the Project Butterfly headquarters but they found it to be too small during rehearsals. When they located the auditorium, he asked production designer Lisa Soper to dress it like a 1970s variety show set. They eventually found that this also did not work and instead moved towards more 1980s designs, such as those used by the band Kraftwerk. Gunn wanted the dancing to be outlandish and robotic, but he wanted all of the actors to do it very seriously and stoically, as he felt that reflected the balance of seriousness and silliness that the series has. Gunn hired choreographer Charissa-Lee Barton to help him plan the sequence, and only found out later that she was married to actor Alan Tudyk, who performed many of the actions for Barton while she choreographed the dance. Tudyk also stood-in as Peacemaker during rehearsal when Cena was not available.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: Sarofsky, the company behind the onscreen titles for "The Suicide Squad", provided the typography for the "Peacemaker" opening sequence. The company took inspiration from the series' hair metal soundtrack by researching band logos and concert posters for the genre. They found many of these to be "nearly illegible", and needed a font that evoked the style while being readable for the audience. The font New Zelek was ultimately chosen, as it has "the angular, geometric feel we were looking for and the letterforms are clear and familiar enough that one can read the words effortlessly". The letters are shown in pink and blue neon to match with the sequence's production design, and Sarofsky applied the title treatment to the "previously on" title cards and episode titles. After the sequence received positive responses, Gunn said they wanted to "up [their] game" for a potential second season.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: Each episode begins with a recap, including the first which has a recap of the events of "The Suicide Squad". This includes a moment that was removed from the film, in which Flo Crawley, an aide of Waller's who knocked her out during the final fight, is arrested. Gunn said this was not necessary to see for the ending of the film, but was included in the recap for "Peacemaker" because it explained why the character was not included on the team with Waller's other aides Harcourt and Economos.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: After having a difficult time with the visual effects-heavy character King Shark in "The Suicide Squad", Gunn said creating Eagly for "Peacemaker" was a lot easier. Weta Digital, who worked on King Shark, provided the visual effects for Eagly and based the animated model on an existing one that the company had previously used. The series' camera crew often needed to be digitally removed from the reflections on Peacemaker's helmet.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: Gunn revealed in June 2021 that Clint Mansell and Kevin Kiner were composing the score for the series, after "The Suicide Squad" composer John Murphy was busy writing the score for Gunn's "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3". Murphy did perform and produce a cover of Foster the People's "Pumped Up Kicks", featuring Ralph Saenz, for the series, which was released as a single on January 9, 2022. The following day, Gunn released a Spotify playlist featuring songs from the series; it initially just covered the first three episodes, including Murphy's version of "Pumped Up Kicks", but Gunn planned to update the playlist with the release of each subsequent episode.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: Like with his feature films, Gunn selected all of the songs for the series himself and wrote them into the script. He chose the hair metal genre of music because he thought it is what Peacemaker would listen to, and because he had spent the last few years exploring it after previously not being a fan. He was excited to bring those songs, including some from new and unknown bands, to a new audience like he had done with pre-1980s pop music on the soundtrack for "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014). The series' opening title sequence features the song "Do Ya Wanna Taste It" by Wig Wam. Gunn gave playlists of hair metal songs to Mansell and Kiner as inspiration for the series' score, and discussed the "unapologetically melodic ballads" written by those bands. Mansell developed the "broad strokes" of the music and Kiner fleshed out those ideas. The latter described their music for the series as a mixture of rock, orchestra, and choir, and compared it to the work of bands Queen and Cinderella; Fred Coury, a drummer for Cinderella, contributed to the score. The main theme for Peacemaker is primarily played on electric guitar, even for more emotional moments that traditionally would use piano. Kiner felt they created a score that was unique to the series and title character.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: During filming for "The Suicide Squad" in Panama, Gunn learned that his dog was about to die. He said this was one of the saddest days of his life, and he decided to fly home to see the dog while he still could. When Gunn was waiting to be taken to the airport, Cena played a version of Pixies' "Where Is My Mind?" on piano. Gunn said, "It crushed me and yet soothed me and everyone around me was crying", and he wanted to try capture that moment in "Peacemaker" with a scene where the title character plays a piano and expresses himself as an artist for the first time. In the scene, Cena plays a cover of Mötley Crüe's "Home Sweet Home", which was arranged by Murphy and released as a single on February 4. A soundtrack album featuring Mansell and Kiner's score, as well as Murphy's "Pumped Up Kicks" cover and Cena's "Home Sweet Home" cover, was released on February 18.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: The first teaser trailer for the series was released during the virtual DC FanDome event in October 2021, along with some behind-the-scenes footage. Commentators discussed the comedic tone of the teaser, feeling it was consistent with Gunn and Cena's work on "The Suicide Squad", and also noted the hints that Brooks' Leota could help Peacemaker become a better person during the series. Peacemaker's pet bald eagle, Eagly, was also a highlight from the teaser. From January 6 to May 27, 2022, the Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood was updated to feature props and costumes from the series, including a life-sized version of Eagly. As he did while promoting "The Suicide Squad", Cena decided to wear the Peacemaker costume for some interviews and other promotional events as a way to familiarize the audience with the lesser-known character.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: "Peacemaker" premiered on HBO Max on January 13, 2022, with its first three episodes. The other five were released weekly through February 17. It was released in the UK on March 22, on Sky Max and Now. The first season was released on DVD and Blu-ray on November 22, 2022, by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: According to Whip Media, who track viewership data for the 19 million worldwide users of their TV Time app, "Peacemaker" was the most anticipated new series of January 2022. "Variety" also named it one of the 40 most anticipated series of 2022. Analytics company Samba TV, which gathers viewership data from certain Smart TVs and content providers, reported that 638,000 U.S. households watched the first episode over its first four days of release. This was considerably lower than their estimates for two recent series on rival streaming service Disney+: "The Book of Boba Fett" (1.7 million U.S. households in its first five days) and "Hawkeye" (1.5 million U.S. households during its launch). Whip Media calculated that "Peacemaker" was the third-highest original streaming series for U.S. viewership during the week it premiered, behind "The Book of Boba Fett" and Netflix's "Cobra Kai". It remained in that position on the chart for the next two weeks, dropped to fourth place for the weeks that the sixth and seventh episodes were released, and ended in second place during the week of the season finale.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: JustWatch, a guide to streaming content with access to data from more than 20 million users around the world, estimated that "Peacemaker" was the second- or third-most watched streaming series in the U.S. for each week of its release, behind Paramount Network's "Yellowstone", Showtime's "Yellowjackets", and Apple TV+'s "Severance" on different weeks. Parrot Analytics determines audience "demand expressions" based on various data sources, including video streaming, social media activity, photo sharing, comments on fan and critic rating platforms, downloading and streaming on file sharing sites, and blogging. During the week of the series' debut, the company calculated that for U.S. streaming series it was the fifty-second-most in demand. It moved up to seventh place the next week, and remained in the top ten for the rest of its run. It was calculated to be the fourth-most in demand streaming series in the U.S. during the week of the first-season finale, with Parrot saying it was 33.7 times more in demand than the average series. Globally, the company said "Peacemaker" was the most in-demand series in the world a week after its debut, ahead of popular series such as "The Book of Boba Fett" and Netflix's "The Witcher". Parrot calculated that, globally, "Peacemaker" was 69.5 times more in demand than the average series.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: On "Variety" "Trending TV" chart—which looks at weekly audience engagement based on Twitter mentions, retweets, and likes—the series appeared in the top ten for each week that a new episode was released, starting in second place with 295,000 engagements behind HBO's "Euphoria" which had 440,000. It was first place for the first time during the week of the season finale, with nearly 700,000 engagements. The site said this "blew away the TV competition", with "Euphoria" being the next closest series that week with around 460,000 engagements. "Deadline Hollywood" reported that each episode of "Peacemaker" received higher viewership than the last, and HBO Max stated that the season finale's viewership was 44 percent higher than the series premiere's. According to the service, the finale broke the record for highest single day viewership of an HBO Max original episode.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 94% approval rating with an average rating of 7.7/10, based on 86 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, "John Cena's still in solid form as "Peacemaker", leading a bloody good time that gives writer-director James Gunn full permission to let his freak flag fly." Metacritic gave it a weighted average score of 70 out of 100 based on reviews from 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: "IGN" gave the first three episodes 8 out of 10, saying that "The three-episode premiere offers a goofy takedown of vigilantism" while praising the cast's performances and humor. "The Guardian" gave the first three episodes a score of 3 out of 5 writing "James Gunn's Suicide Squad character gets his own HBO Max series with mixed results but a winning central performance."


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: The title sequence was met with critical acclaim, with "TV Guide"s Matt Roush stating that it "perfectly captures the tongue-in-bloody-cheek spirit" of the series.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: Agee was named "TVLine"s "Performer of the Week" for the season finale, especially for his emotional monologue about why Economos dyes his beard. The site also noted the performances in the episode of Chang, Brooks, Holland, and Cena, with the latter also being named an honorable mention for "Performer of the Week" for the previous episode, specifically for the scenes where Peacemaker kills his father and prays for Eagly.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: HBO Max and DC worked with production company Rooster Teeth to produce an official, aftershow-style video podcast titled "Podly". Hosted by Rooster Teeth's Fiona Nova and Ify Nwadiwe, each episode of the podcast includes a recap of one of the series' episodes as well as interviews with cast and crew members. The video podcast is available to stream on HBO Max and YouTube, with an audio-only version of it available via audio platforms.


title: Peacemaker (TV series)

text: In January 2021, Gunn said he had ideas for more "The Suicide Squad" television spin-offs beyond "Peacemaker", and confirmed that he was working on another one a year later. In May 2022, a series featuring Amanda Waller was revealed, with Davis in negotiations to reprise her role. Christal Henry was writing the series, which was expected to build off Waller's appearances in "Peacemaker". The next month, Gunn said the series that he had revealed earlier was separate from a potential Amanda Waller project though there would be "some blending" of characters from "Peacemaker" in both.


title: The Simpsons

text: The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. The show is set in the fictional town of Springfield and parodies American culture and society, television, and the human condition.


title: The Simpsons

text: The family was conceived by Groening shortly before a solicitation for a series of animated shorts with producer James L. Brooks. He created a dysfunctional family and named the characters after his own family members, substituting Bart for his own name; he thought Simpson was a funny name in that it sounded similar to "simpleton". The shorts became a part of "The Tracey Ullman Show" on April 19, 1987. After three seasons, the sketch was developed into a half-hour prime time show and became Fox's first series to land in the Top 30 ratings in a season (1989–1990).


title: The Simpsons

text: Since its debut on December 17, 1989, episodes of the show have been broadcast. It is the longest-running American animated series, longest-running American sitcom, and the longest-running American scripted primetime television series, both in terms of seasons and number of episodes. A feature-length film, "The Simpsons Movie", was released in theaters worldwide on July 27, 2007, and grossed over $527 million, with a sequel in development as of 2018. The series has also spawned numerous comic book series, video games, books, and other related media, as well as a billion-dollar merchandising industry. "The Simpsons" is a joint production by Gracie Films and 20th Television. On March 3, 2021, the series was announced to have been renewed for seasons 33 and 34, which were later confirmed to have 22 episodes each, increasing the episode count from 706 to 750. Its thirty-third season premiered on September 26, 2021 and ended on May 22, 2022. The thirty-fourth season premiered on September 25, 2022.


title: The Simpsons

text: "The Simpsons" received widespread acclaim throughout its early seasons in the 1990s, which are generally considered its "golden age". Since then, it has been criticized for a perceived decline in quality. "Time" named it the 20th century's best television series, and Erik Adams of "The A.V. Club" named it "television's crowning achievement regardless of format". On January 14, 2000, the Simpson family was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. It has won dozens of awards since it debuted as a series, including 35 Primetime Emmy Awards, 34 Annie Awards, and 2 Peabody Awards. Homer's exclamatory catchphrase of "D'oh!" has been adopted into the English language, while "The Simpsons" has influenced many other later adult-oriented animated sitcom television series.


title: The Simpsons

text: The main characters are the Simpson family, who live in a fictional "Middle America" town of Springfield. Homer, the father, works as a safety inspector at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, a position at odds with his careless, buffoonish personality. He is married to Marge Bouvier, a stereotypical American housewife and mother. They have three children: Bart, a ten-year-old troublemaker and prankster; Lisa, a precocious eight-year-old activist; and Maggie, the baby of the family who rarely speaks, but communicates by sucking on a pacifier. Although the family is dysfunctional, many episodes examine their relationships and bonds with each other and they are often shown to care about one another. Homer's dad Grampa Simpson lives in the Springfield Retirement Home after Homer forced his dad to sell his house so that his family could buy theirs. Grampa Simpson has had starring roles in several episodes.


title: The Simpsons

text: The family also owns a dog, Santa's Little Helper, and a cat, Snowball II, who is replaced by a cat also called Snowball II in the fifteenth season episode "I, (Annoyed Grunt)-Bot". Both pets have had starring roles in several episodes.