Not long before this century began,

Not long before this century began, Britain had lost its most important American colonies in a war of independence. When the century began, the country was locked in a war with France, during which an invasion by a France army was a real possibility. Soon after the end of the century, Britain controlled the biggest empire the world had ever seen.

One section of this empire was Ireland. It was during this century that the British culture and way of life came to predominate in Ireland. In the 1840s, the potato crop failed two years in a row and there was a terrible famine. Millions of peasants, those with Irish Gaelic language and customs, either died or emigrated. By the end of the century almost the whole of the remaining population were using English as their first language.

Another part of the empire was made up of Canada, Australia and New Zealand. These countries had complete internal self-government but recognized the overall authority of the British government. Another was India, an enormous country with a culture more ancient that Britain’s. Tens of thousands of British civil servants and troops were used to govern it. At the head of this administration was a viceroy (governor) whose position within the country was similar to the monarch’s in Britain itself. Because India was so far away, and the journey from Britain took so long, these British officials spent most of their working lives there and so developed a distinctly Anglo-Indian way of life. Large parts of Africa also belonged to the empire. Except for South Africa, where there was some British settlement, most of Britain's African colonies started as treading bases on the coast, and were only incorporated into the empire at the end of the century.
As well as these areas (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India and Africa), the empire included numerous smaller areas and islands. Some, such as those in the Caribbean, were the result of earlier British settlement, but most were acquired because of their strategic position along trading routes.