After losing the 13 colonies Britain did not want its empire to shrink again, and decided to make it even bigger. Ruling India was economically very beneficial for Britain, because the British ...

The British Empire stretched over 13 million square miles across several continents—23 percent of the world's land—at its height in 1922, whence comes the phrase: "The sun never sets on the ...

Britons were never very interested in their empire. At its Victorian peak, the great public controversies were more likely to be liturgical than imperial. In 1948, 51% of the British public could ...