Britain had started her collection of overseas colonies in the reign of Elizabeth I. by 1602,
both England and the Netherlands had founded an ‘East India Company’ on the Indian
coast to trade with the Far East. The first settlements in North America took root and
flourished in early Stuart times. In 1661, Britain gained her first African foothold, seizing
James Island on the Gambia River. By the middle of the 1700s, these scattered colonies
had begun to grow into a powerful and profitable empire. By the 1750s the British navy
ruled the waves. By 1763 Britain had won most of France’s territory in North America.
The map above shows the extend of the empire in 1821.