Every Major Colony of the British Empire Explained (P3)

Hello and welcome to the final instalment I think so at least of this three-part series in which I attempt to name every major possession of the British Empire that they once held in control. Once again, just to avoid any confusion before we start the blog, I would count a British possession to be major, depending on either its size, significance to the empire, its history, or its inhabitants.

As you may have seen from the quick links, alone, this blog will be quite longer than the previous two parts, containing 12 colonies, compared to the 7 and 8 colonies in the former. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it and without any more talk, for the final time, let's get straight into it!

Starting the blog off with a very well known British colony, we come to the Land Down Under of Australia. The first traces of British settlements on the continent dates all the way back to 1770, when the very famous British explorer, Captain James Cook, along with his expedition crew, landed on the east coast of Australia, of what we now know as modern-day Sydney, in the newly named, Botany Bay. After this date, many other British colonialists began to arrive and establish numerous colonies, which were originally used for penal means, meaning that prisoners were sent there to do work. Eventually, in 1788, all of these small colonies were combined together to make one whole colony that the British named "New South Wales".

Finally coming back to the Indian Subcontinent, we have British Ceylon (Sri Lanka today), which not many people know about. The first traces of British settlements on this island date back to 1796, during the Napoleonic Wars of the late 1700s and early 1800s, when British forces occupied the country in fear of it falling into French hands after the fall of the Netherlands, who then had most of the island. Following the end of the war in 1802, the Dutch parts of the island were formally given to the British, establishing it as a Crown Colony. One very common misconception that many people think is that Ceylon was part of the British Raj, which it was not and stayed as a completely different colony. However, the British still didn't have full control over the island as the decently strong and powerful Kingdom of Kandy remained in control of the highlands of the central island. Despite this, eventually the Kingdom fell into the hands of the British, in 1815, after a long and brutal conflict between the two. During Ceylon's time under the British, the island was heavily industrialised and was a prime spot for rubber growing and tea fields which they used a lot for the very popular drink back in the UK.

At the turn of the 19th century, Ceylon was also introduced to democratic forms of running the country after the British established a small elected group of appointees that made up the consulate on the island. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, in 1945, Ceylon was finally granted almost full independence, becoming a Dominion of the Commonwealth in 1948. The island remained like this for the next 24 years until it became a Republic and was renamed to the current title "Sri Lanka" as we all know today.

While this possession wasn't really colony or possession, British Palestine still has a very interesting story with the British and how it was formed. Officially known as a Mandate, the British were given this possession from the newly created League of Nations in 1922, from the carved up territories of the collapsed Ottoman Empire. 

Another very interesting British colony that was once under rule in Asia was Singapore. The first signs of British activity in the area began in 1819 when small ports and settlements on the coast of the island were established. In 1926, British control grew to eventually cover the whole island after driving out the original Sultanate's ruler. During the same year, Singapore became part of the much larger colony, Straits Settlements, the most dominant in the Malay archipelago. Similar to British India and Ceylon, it was also a great place for rubber cultivation, which the island was introduced to in the late 1890s.

Continuing from the previous British Singapore, we come to the neighbour-to-Singapore, British Malaya. Unlike the Singapore colony, the first traces of British settlements and colonialism in Malaya date much further back, all the way to the year 1771 when the British established its first trading post in the region on the small island of Penang, just off the coast of the peninsula. As time went on, many more colonies and settlements were founded in Malaya, which eventually all were combined together to form one central and large colony named, the Straits Settlements. During the very eventful 1800s, Malaya was regarded as a very valuable colony to the British Empire after the discovery of large tin deposits. However, in the middle of the Second World War, being in the location it was, British Malaya, and much of the Malayan Archipelago was consumed by the rapidly expanding Japanese Empire after an successful invasion from their forces. As a result of this, the colony remained under Japanese occupation from 1942 until the end of the war in 1945. After this and the collapse of the Japanese Empire, Malaya was transferred back to Britain, who held the colony until in 1963, when Malaya finally gained full independence along with some other small colonies like North Borneo to form the Federation of Malaysia, ending another British possession.

Coming back to the Middle East, another British possession that was won in the First World War from the carvings of the Ottoman Empire was Mandatory Iraq, which wasn't really a colony or protectorate, but was under British administration. 

Coming back to Oceania for the final time, we have New Zealand, which was also a fairly well-known British colony. The first traces of British colonialism on the two islands date back to the late 1700s after the discovery of Australia, when New Zealand was incorporated into the Australian colony of New South Wales. However, it wasn't long until New Zealand itself became a separate colony in 1841. Overtime, more British colonialists and settlers arrived on the two islands, beginning to start big settlements on mostly the North Island, considering the fact that the South was quite mountainous and home to some uninhabitable terrain.

Heading back to the Saharan deserts of Northern Africa, we come to British Somaliland, which was a protectorate administered by the British beginning in 1884, after gaining it in the Berlin Conference that carved Africa up between many European colonial powers in the region. 

Now, we come to British Jamaica, which was one of the major possessions held by the empire in the West Indies and was actually one of the first ever British colonies, but is quite ironically the last colony we will talk about in this series. First established as an English colony very early on in 1655, and later a British colony in 1707, Jamaica was one of the most vital colonies for sugarcane growing as it was leading in the production of sugar, after switching from cotton and tobacco, to solely this as it was resulting in a boom in the British sugarcane industry and also was a massive success to Britain's extremely popular drink, Tea. In 1866, Jamaica became a Crown Colony of the empire, meaning that it was administered directly by the Crown, which was the UK government acting on behalf of the Royal British Monarchy. Finally, after over 300 years of being ruled by the British, Jamaica finally was granted independence by the British in 1962.

Well, that finally wraps up this very short, three-part series of mine. I'm really sorry that I took absolutely aged to release this but since this final part was much longer than the other two parts, it took quite a while to make. But nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed this blog and also the whole series, because I definitely had a great amount of fun in the making of this. Also, please let me know your thoughts on how this side-series went and if you would like more series' that will run alongside my main series like this.