Qualla: British Empire https://qualla.com/british-empire en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/british-empire-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: British Empire https://qualla.com/british-empire British Empire: Introduction https://qualla.com/british-empire/ Photo credit Sunoao, CC BY-SA 4.0. Three days. That is roughly how long, on average, it took the sun to set somewhere on the British Empire and rise again somewhere else - because by 1920 it never did. The empire by then covered 35.5 million square kilometres, about a quarter of all the land on Earth, and ruled the lives of roughly 412 million people. It was the largest empire in history. It was also, depending on whom you ask and where they lived, a trading network, a settler project, a school system, a railway company, a slave market, a famine, a massacre, and a long, painful argument that is still going on. Any story this big has to be told with both eyes open. The empire built things. It also broke things. The people whose ancestors lived under it - in Bengal, in Kenya, in Ireland, in Jamaica, in Australia, in dozens of other places - know which of those things mattered to them.

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Image: Sunoao | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/british-empire-wp/gcpv-british-empire-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full British Empire: The Beginning at Sea https://qualla.com/british-empire/ Photo credit مھتاب احمد, CC BY-SA 4.0. It started small and badly. In 1497 King Henry VII sent John Cabot west from Bristol to find a route to Asia. Cabot reached Newfoundland, thought he had reached Asia, sailed home, sailed out again the next year, and disappeared. For nearly a century after that, England did almost...

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Image: مھتاب احمد | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/british-empire-wp/gcpv-british-empire-the-beginning-at-sea.mp3 0:06 2 full British Empire: Sugar, Slavery, and the Atlantic https://qualla.com/british-empire/ Photo credit British Empire Exhibition (1924 : Wembley, England) Coffin, Ernest. Shepard, Thos, Public domain. For roughly two centuries the most profitable corner of the British Empire was a handful of small Caribbean islands - Barbados, Jamaica, St Kitts, Antigua - where sugar was grown on plantations worked by people brought in chains from West Africa. Ships out of Bristol, Liverpool, ...

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Image: British Empire Exhibition (1924 : Wembley, England) Coffin, Ernest. Shepard, Thos | Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/british-empire-wp/gcpv-british-empire-sugar-slavery-and-the-atlantic.mp3 0:06 3 full British Empire: India and the Long Wound https://qualla.com/british-empire/ Photo credit Stephen Basdeo, Public domain. The British conquest of India was carried out for most of its history not by the British state but by a private company. The East India Company defeated the Nawab of Bengal at Plassey in 1757 with a force largely made up of Indian sepoys led by British officers, and from that mom...

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Image: Stephen Basdeo | Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/british-empire-wp/gcpv-british-empire-india-and-the-long-wound.mp3 0:06 4 full British Empire: The High Imperial Century https://qualla.com/british-empire/ Photo credit Vadac., Public domain. Between 1815 and 1914 the empire added roughly ten million square miles and four hundred million people. Some of that expansion went to white settler colonies that became the dominions - Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa - and were gradually granted self-government, wi...

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Image: Vadac. | Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/british-empire-wp/gcpv-british-empire-the-high-imperial-century.mp3 0:06 5 full British Empire: Resistance and the Long Unwinding https://qualla.com/british-empire/ Photo credit Kaihsu Tai, CC BY-SA 3.0. The empire was never simply done to people. It was contested, in every territory, from the moment it arrived. The American Revolution of 1776 was the first big rupture. The Irish, never reconciled to Union with Britain, fought rebellion after rebellion before the Easter Rising of...

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Image: Kaihsu Tai | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/british-empire-wp/gcpv-british-empire-resistance-and-the-long-unwinding.mp3 0:06 6 full British Empire: What is Left https://qualla.com/british-empire/ Photo credit The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick, Public domain. Fourteen overseas territories - Bermuda, the Falklands, Gibraltar, the Caymans, Pitcairn, some others - are still under British sovereignty. The Commonwealth of Nations remains a voluntary association of mostly former colonies, fifteen of which still share the British monarch. En...

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Image: The Red Hat of Pat Ferrick | Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/british-empire-wp/gcpv-british-empire-what-is-left.mp3 0:06 7 full