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British Empire   /brˈɪtɪʃ ˈɛmpaɪər/   Listen
British Empire

noun
1.
A former empire consisting of Great Britain and all the territories under its control; reached its greatest extent at the end of World War I; it included the British Isles, British West Indies, Canada, British Guiana; British West Africa, British East Africa, India, Australia, New Zealand.






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"British Empire" Quotes from Famous Books



... literature for his well-known work, The Constitution of England, written in French, and translated into English in 1775. He also wrote a comparison of the English Government with that of Sweden, a History of the Flagellants (1777), and The British Empire in Europe (1787). He came to England in 1769, lived in great poverty, and having inherited a small fortune, returned to his native ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... Sanjak, the magnificent orb, slowly and regretfully, sinks into the west. On the south, where the soil is more fertile and where the land begins to be worth occupying, the Sanjak is, or will be, bounded by the British Empire. ...
— Frenzied Fiction • Stephen Leacock

... of one or more of England's enemy nations. Desperate though these plans seemed, it is possible that they might have succeeded, had not an untimely death overtaken him. Holland, with bitter recollections of two recent wars with England, might have welcomed a chance to break up the British Empire and regain her lucrative tobacco trade. In its essential points it was the same plan which brought independence to America a century later almost ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker

... The combination and sequence of events seems almost as if it were arranged to suggest the dark and ominous parallel. The first action looked only too like the invasion of Belgium, and the second like the evacuation of Belgium. So that vast and silent crowd in the West looked at the British Empire, as men look at a great tower that has begun to lean. Thus it was that while I found real pleasure, I could not find unrelieved consolation in the sincere compliments paid to my country by so many cultivated Americans; their memories of homely corners of historic counties from ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton

... preponderant on the side of peace, and wish to hold their own in Western civilization by force of wealth and industry, and not by arms. To us, too, it is clear, and will be one day to the Germanic Powers, that the British Empire, the largest political aggregate on the globe, is essentially a league of free peoples, under no compulsion from the centre, but responsive to attack upon their power or liberty by any third party, ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various

... industrial and maritime power of the 19th century, played a leading role in developing parliamentary democracy and in advancing literature and science. At its zenith, the British Empire stretched over one-fourth of the earth's surface. The first half of the 20th century saw the UK's strength seriously depleted in two World Wars. The second half witnessed the dismantling of the Empire and the UK rebuilding itself into a modern and prosperous ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... the leading political men of England. They held, all of them but a little band of republican- grounded sympathizers with the Patriots, that the principles announced by the Patriots went too far, and that, in clinging to them the Americans were endangering the British empire; and the only question among the public men of England was, whether the Crown or the Parliament was the proper instrumentality, as the phrase was, for reducing the Colonies to obedience. Lord Barrington, in his speech above cited, laid most stress on the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... out nonchalantly, and Peter lit a cigarette, while the others threw remarks at the man as to luggage. Then they all trooped off together in a crowd that consisted of every variety of rank and regiment and section of the British Empire, plus ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable

... Reventlow, in last Sunday's Deutsche Tageszeitung, explains the importance and meaning of Calais as a German objective in the west and as a key to the destruction of the British Empire. Dr. Ernst Jaeckh, in an article called "Calais or Suez," maintained that if an English statesman had to make a choice he would undoubtedly give up Calais and cling to Suez rather than give up Suez and control ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various

... is the mother-city of the English-speaking world. To ask of the citizens of London some outward sign that Shakespeare is a living source of British prestige, an unifying factor in the consolidation of the British Empire, and a powerful element in the maintenance of fraternal relations with the United States, seems therefore no unreasonable demand. Neither cloistered study of his plays, nor the occasional representation of ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee

... birth of the British Empire and the spacious days of Queen Elizabeth have not merely obscured but contradicted the crucial truth. From such phrases one would fancy that England, in some imperial fashion, now first realized that she was great. It would be far truer to say that she now ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton

... hoped, for the honor of the British Empire, that when Major-General Sir John Harvey, lieutenant-governor and commander in chief of the Province of New Brunswick, is made acquainted with the place where the Hon. Rufus McIntire, land agent of the State of Maine, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 3: Martin Van Buren • James D. Richardson

... became a commonwealth of the British Empire in 1901. It was able to take advantage of its natural resources to rapidly develop its agricultural and manufacturing industries and to make a major contribution to the British effort in World Wars I and II. Long-term concerns include pollution, ...
— The 2003 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... rights. The latter resolution was no doubt a resolution of despair; as matters stood, the revolt of the isolated urban communities against the Roman government might well appear still more hopeless than the revolt of the American colonies against the British empire; to all appearance the Roman government might with moderate attention and energy of action prepare for this second insurrection the fate of its predecessor. But was it less a resolution of despair, to sit still and allow things to take their course? When they ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... country for six hundred years—that modus tenendi parliamentum, which lasted and outlasted of Plantagenet the wars, of Tudor the violence, and of Stuart the systematic falsehood—the condition of our connection—yes, the constitution he destroys is one of the pillars of the British Empire. He may walk round it and round it, and the more he contemplates the more must he admire it—such a one as had cost England of money millions and of blood a deluge, cheaply and nobly expended—whose ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis

... animals; the herds of elephants, the troops of lions and tigers, the schools of hippopotamuses, and the mass-meetings of anthropoid apes. Above and beyond these in their strangeness were the figures of humanity representative of the globe-girdling British empire, in their drawers and turbans and their swarthy skins, who could urge a patriotic interest, impossible for me, in the place. One is, of course, used to all sorts of alien shapes in Central Park, but there ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells

... managed to move his flank-guard three miles in two minutes? So a field day would pass, each rank being roundly condemned to everlasting perdition by the rank immediately below it, until the G.O.C., Egypt, and the British Empire, bore the brunt of the awful damnings. Bad-tempered and dishevelled, the troops would set off on their homeward march, the final straw being added to the annoyances of the infantry by the passage to windward of the mounted rifles. Shrouded in the dust, they levelled their final, terrible ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... towns, subject, of course, to judicial supervision. The corporation itself was created subject to the municipal laws of England, and could have no existence without the realm; and though perhaps even then the American wilderness might have been held to belong to the British empire, it formed no part of the kingdom, [Footnote: Blackstone's Commentaries, i. 109.] and was altogether beyond the limits of that jurisdiction from whose customs and statutes the life of this imaginary being sprang. Therefore, the governing body could legally exercise its functions ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... overtaken a mile or two away, and murdered three policemen with his closed left hand. The remaining officer was surprised—nay, pained—and the negro got away. But this was enough to set all the English papers in a flame, and for a month or two the main purpose of the British Empire was to prevent the buck nigger (who was so in both senses) escaping by any English port. Persons of a figure remotely reconcilable with his were subjected to quite extraordinary inquisitions, made to scrub ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... voiced the opinion of the majority of the soldiers when he said, "Oh, this bloomin' war will be over in three months." Not alone was this Bill's opinion, or that of the men only, but the opinion of the people of Canada, the opinion of the people of the whole British Empire. ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat

... think this is a very crooked and shuffling policy for the great British Empire to pursue. And others, that the Gladstone policy is sentimental ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 20, March 25, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... died of a miserable old age in his own country, or prematurely of damp in the bottom of a foreign mine, was surely of little consequence, provided that by a change in his mode of life he benefited the British Empire. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... is superseded by a National Parliament and Ireland voluntarily incorporated with the British Empire, as Canada, Australasia, and South Africa have been incorporated, an Irishman resorting to arms to achieve the independence of his country is doing only what Englishmen will do if it be their misfortune to be invaded and conquered by the Germans ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard

... the treaty of Paris in 1763. [Footnote: Bancroft, "History of the United States," 4:460.] Burke [Footnote: William Burke, "Remarks on the Letter Addressed to Two Great Men."] prophesied that the removal of France from North America would precipitate, as it did, the division of the British Empire. And Richard Henry Greene, the great English historian, dates the foundation of the great independent republic of the west (the United States) from the triumph of Wolfe on ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... accompaniment to a Paper which circulates in all parts of the British Empire,—a ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 212, November 19, 1853 • Various

... party, race, or politics, that assistance and encouragement which their patriotism has a right to command ... but the disturbers of the public peace, the violators of the law, the enemies of the Crown and of the British Empire will find in me an uncompromising opponent, determined to put in force against them all the powers civil and military with which I have been invested.' It was a policy of firmness united to conciliation that Durham announced. He came ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... history: (a) Some information about the growth of the Empire; for example, how and when Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, or any other part of the Empire was added; (b) Comparison of the size of the British Empire with that of any earlier Empire, such as the Persian, Greek, or Roman; (c) The growth of Great Britain's commercial and naval supremacy, on what it is founded, what danger there is of losing it, etc.; (d) Interpretation of the Union Jack, or ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: History • Ontario Ministry of Education

... clear from the recent discussion in the British Parliament that the Irish problem weighs like an almost intolerable burden just as much upon the British Empire as it does upon Ireland? Is it not equally clear from England's concession of a cotton tariff to India that she will be obliged for her own sake to make further concessions to justice in that country? And can America ever hope to have any standing in the court of nations as long as our infamous ...
— The Shield • Various

... line, yet the enemy failed to gain their object. For the 1st Canadian Division flung itself across the gap and held on like heroes, fought with desperate bravery indeed, and wrought for the people of the British Empire, and for their brothers and sisters in Canada, a tale which, so long as the British nation exists, will ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... there is almost as great a difference between the fiscal laws and governments of the various Australian Colonies as between those of foreign States in Europe—the only thing in common being the language and the money of the British Empire. Although however, they agree to differ amongst themselves, there can be no doubt of the loyalty of the group, as a whole, to their parent nation. I shall go no further into this matter, as, although English ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... the civilisation, and the customs of England, and has in fact grown rich by adopting them, the memories of former hardships have clung to her, and have made her ready to receive willingly the teachings of those whose only object it has been to undermine the prestige of the British Empire. In no respect has she more readily taken to her bosom English practices than in that of the letting and the hiring of land. In various countries, such as Italy, Russia, France, and the United States, systems ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope

... result? It was this: that the British Empire, the richest prize that the world has ever displayed, spread out its treasures before the envious eyes of militant nations, practically undefended, save for its slender ring of circling ships. There it lay, a constant and irresistible lure, especially to that parvenu and predatory Germanic Power ...
— Freedom In Service - Six Essays on Matters Concerning Britain's Safety and Good Government • Fossey John Cobb Hearnshaw

... foster multinational cooperation and assistance, as a voluntary association that evolved from the British Empire ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... had the worst enemy. That was wealth, comfort, quiet business, lack of big disturbances and of great sufferings. The English Church still succeeded in preventing all the misuses and abuses of life under such circumstances. This success can be appreciated only if the British Empire is compared with an antique Pagan Empire. Where in this Empire is there a Lucullus or a Caracalla? The astonishing luxury, the bestial, insatiable passions? Or the furious competitions in petty things with which the social life of Rome was daily intoxicated? Yet English Christianity is neither ...
— The Religious Spirit of the Slavs (1916) - Sermons On Subjects Suggested By The War, Third Series • Nikolaj Velimirovic

... however, approaching, when he whose moral atmosphere was, like his native climate, the tempest and the whirlwind, might hope to glean some benefit from the impending storm which threatened the peace of the British empire. ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson

... scene over the purchase of a doll, the cost of which—clad only in its birthday dress—was reported to me as 'a fair affront.' Even after all these years Mary jibs at Continental prices. It is her way of keeping up the prestige of the British Empire, bless her. An overcharge, in her opinion, is a deliberate twist ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull

... Alexander II. But none of those countries were given the chance to develop their powers and their resources as they would have been able to do, had England been less anxious about the fate of the Sultan, whose domains were necessary to the safety of the British Empire as a bulwark against ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon

... the Diamond Fields was that they belonged to a Native, notwithstanding the fact that this contention was falsified by the judgment of the English Courts. [19] "There was a notion also," says Froude, "that the finest diamond mine in the world ought not to be lost to the British Empire." ...
— A Century of Wrong • F. W. Reitz

... sake of truth and justice, which used to flourish in Great Britain, I hope that this book will be read by everyone who has the welfare of the British Empire ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... these measures, I believe, will substitute an immediate and lasting peace for the disorders which Lord North's measures have created. The unbought loyalty of a free people, thus secured, will give us more revenue than any coercive measure. Indeed, it is the only cement that can hold together the British Empire." ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller

... see its walls crumble to dust!" thought the chief justice; and, in the bitterness of his heart, he shook his fist at the famous hall. "There began the mischief which now threatens to rend asunder the British empire. The seditious harangues of demagogues in Faneuil Hall, have made rebels of a loyal people, and deprived ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and Tokens of the Possessions and Colonies of the British Empire," by James Atkins. Published by Bernard Quaritch, ...
— The Coinages of the Channel Islands • B. Lowsley

... French as a violin's is to a flute's. Still, French does, by reason of its exquisite concision and clarity, fill its post of honour very worthily, and will not in any near future, I think, be thrust down. Many people, having regard to the very numerous population of the British Empire and the United States, cherish a belief that English will presently be cock of the world's walk. But we have to consider that English is an immensely odd and irregular language, that it is accounted very difficult ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm

... contact with a wider and loftier standard of Liberalism, and, whilst retaining my faith in the principles of my party on domestic questions, I added to it a conviction, not less profound, of the duty of advancing the interests of the British Empire throughout the world by every means in my power. In later years, when I was myself the editor of the Leeds Mercury, some of my excellent friends in London—and notably Mr. Stead—were wont to deplore my tendency in favour of ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.

... many changes for the worse. The master-statesman Pitt had gone out of power and the back-stairs politician Bute had come in. Pitt's 'bloody and expensive war'—the war that more than any other, laid the foundations of the present British Empire—was to be ended on any terms the country could be persuaded to bear. Thus the end of the Seven Years' War, or, as the British part of it was more correctly called, the 'Maritime War,' was no more glorious in statesmanship than ...
— The Father of British Canada: A Chronicle of Carleton • William Wood

... earth's surface and the care of one in five of all the inhabitants of the world." Not a suggestion that the inhabitants of the world are perhaps able to take care of themselves. Not even a passing recollection when that White Man's Burden is in question that the men outside the British Empire, and even inside the German Empire, are by no means exclusively black. Only the sancta simplicitas that glories in "the proud position of England," the "sympathy, tolerance, prudence and benevolence of our rule" in the east (as shown, the ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various

... made her the hated of other nations, which has created within her borders a vulgar and unpleasant class—the repository of much arrogant wealth—must cease to be the standard of her life. I have before me at this moment a manifesto of "The British Empire League," patronized by royalty and the dukes, and of which Lord Rothschild is treasurer. The constitution of the League was framed in 1895; and I note with regret that positively the five "principal ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter

... jealousies, no ideas of conflicting interests, no encroaching and ambitious projects, may be allowed to interfere with or prevent the beneficial progress of this important region. With such a man as Mr. Brooke to advise the course most becoming, disinterested, and humane for the British empire to pursue, it is not too much to say that, if the well-being of these races of our fellow-creatures is defeated or postponed, the crime will not lie at our door. The sacrifices we have made to extinguish slavery throughout the world are a sure and unquestionable pledge that we will do our utmost ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel

... the daily and hourly comforts of every Englishman; I shall feel too happy if they leave Europe untouched, and are not ultimately fatal to the destinies of America; but I am madly bent upon keeping foreign enemies out of the British empire, and my limited understanding presents me with no other ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith

... memory goes back to those days, that the South African war, though instigated and furthered by financial interests, would never have happened if public opinion had not been in favour of it on grounds which were quite other than financial—the desire to bring back the Transvaal into the British Empire and to wipe out the memory of the surrender after Majuba, and humanitarian feeling which believed, rightly or wrongly, that the natives would be treated better under our rule. These may or may not have been good reasons ...
— International Finance • Hartley Withers

... instruction of sound teaching in faith and morals. For this reason, we have more than once said that we strongly approve of the voluntary schools, which, by the work and liberality of private individuals, have been established in France, in Belgium, in America, and in the Colonies of the British Empire. We desire their increase, as much as possible, and that they may flourish in the number of their scholars. We ourselves also, seeing the condition of things in this city, continue, with the greatest ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 2, February 1886 • Various

... national policy. After sketching the uses of whale oil, its economic position and its history, he took up the particular problem facing the people of Nantucket, perhaps the foremost whalers in America. As long as they had been subjects of the British Empire they had been able to sell their oil duty-free in England. Now as aliens they must pay the same tariff charged other foreign traders. This meant the difference between a profitable and unprofitable enterprise. A few ...
— The Bounty of the Chesapeake - Fishing in Colonial Virginia • James Wharton

... Naturally the young man had undergone no sentimental troubles; he had not yet talked of marrying, and cared only for the society of mature women who took common-sense views of life. His religion was the British Empire; his saints, the men who had made it; his prophets, the politicians and publicists who held most firmly ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... Great Britain is itself doomed to dissolution at no very distant day; but it does not follow that the United States are, therefore, liable to the same fate, now or ever. So far from this, it is possible, if not highly probable, that as the remote provinces of the British empire shall fall away, the central political system of this continent may very naturally absorb at least one of the fragments, and thereby become stronger as a Government, and more potent for good to the ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol V. Issue III. March, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... as the representative of the Jews in the British Empire, now commenced making his arrangements for the departure of the Mission, and Monsieur Cremieux, as representative of the Jews in France, took ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... the ideas of the West have affected the outer world, how far they have been modified to meet its needs, and how they have developed in the process. In particular I have endeavoured to direct attention to the significant new political form which we have seen coming into existence, and of which the British Empire is the oldest and the most highly developed example—the world-state, embracing peoples of many different types, with a Western nation-state as its nucleus. The study of this new form seems to me to be a neglected branch of political science, and one of vital importance. Whether or not it ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir

... thoughtful Englishman would attempt to justify, on high moral grounds, the building up of the British empire: for instance, the possession of Egypt and India by Britain. How does India happen to be a part of the British realm? Every one knows the answer. The East India Company was simply the most adventurous and enterprising trading ...
— The Soul of Democracy - The Philosophy Of The World War In Relation To Human Liberty • Edward Howard Griggs

... terms the Republic of the United Provinces, or of the United Netherlands, and in later times the Kingdom of the Netherlands, are found outside official documents. Just as the title "History of England" gradually includes the histories of Wales, of Scotland, of Ireland, and finally of the widespread British Empire, so is it in a smaller way with the history that is told in the following pages. That history, to be really complete, should begin with an account of mediaeval Holland in the feudal times which preceded the Burgundian period; and such an account was indeed actually written, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... is, indeed, another school which would like to shut off all foreign countries by a tariff wall and make the British Empire mutually self-supporting, on the economic basis adopted by those three old ladies in decayed circumstances who subsisted by taking tea in one ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... the war-path. But that darned Britisher was stubborn-set on pullin' out that night for Fort Garry, with his wife and kid, and what did the cuss do but nail a blame little Union Jack on his cart, poke the goad in his ox, and hit the trail! My God, I kin still see the old ox with that bit of the British Empire, wiggling out of St. Paul at sundown. And the cuss got there all right, too, though we was all wearing crape beforehand for his sweet-faced wife." This incident was not unique. In the early '60's an ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... Thompson- Seton, and the rest, have told stories about animals so that the American interest in nature might be exploited. The difference is essential. If the "Jungle Books" teach anything it is the moral ideals of the British Empire. But our nature romancers—a fairer term than "fakers," since they do not willingly "fake"—teach the background and tradition of our soil. In the process they inject sentiment, giving us the noble desperation of the stag, the startling wolf-longings of the dog, ...
— Definitions • Henry Seidel Canby

... always been his opinion as an individual since he was capable of forming one. It was his opinion then as a legislator. It was his opinion as a colonial proprietor; and it was his opinion as an Englishman, wishing for the prosperity of the British empire. ...
— The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament (1808) • Thomas Clarkson

... with, they thought he was a man inspired with the highest political wisdom and knowledge. His gifts of dialectical vaticination made them look upon him as the lively oracle of the special Providence which he himself was accustomed to say presided over the British Empire. After a time, however, they began to think that he was what they called too "viewy," too much inclined to paradox, too wild. Often, alas! the feeling in regard to him ended here, and he was written down as impracticable if amusing. That view, ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey

... said, "The population of the British Empire is composed of so many millions, mostly fools." Will the Census be taken on ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various

... aim in life was to make money and to enjoy himself. He would never have exercised his right to vote if voting had involved postponing dinner. He liked to talk of the British Empire, but he did not even know precisely of what countries it consisted, and I think he would cheerfully have handed Canada to France, Australia to Germany, India to Russia, and South Africa to the Boers, if by so doing he could have escaped ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... him with the Russian Union of Soviet Republics, but there is little doubt in my mind that he was a Red agent and that Russia supplied the money which he spent. It would be disastrous to Russia's plans to have too close an accord between this country and the British Empire, and I have no doubt that the coming visit of Premier McDougal was the underlying cause of the attempt. So much ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various

... Forty-six years ago, when Canada became a nation, the Dominion possessed an area of 662,148 square miles; to-day her area covers 3,729,665 square miles, one-third the total size of the British Empire, as large as the continent of Europe without Russia, larger by over one hundred thousand square miles than the ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor

... honourable addition to a Coat of Arms, specially granted with a peculiar significance: thus, the "Union" Device of the British Empire, blazoned on an inescutcheon, is the "Augmentation" specially granted to the great Duke of WELLINGTON, to be borne on the honour point of his ...
— The Handbook to English Heraldry • Charles Boutell

... cruelties of Cumberland and the license of the conquering troops. There was the same temptation ever lurking at the ear of France to whisper new assaults upon England. Ireland was held as a subjugated province, and was in a state of chronic discontent. To either wing of the British empire, alliance with, nay, submission to France, was considered preferable ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various

... true that they had resisted, with fullest strength, SYDNEY BUXTON's proposal. He himself, in powerful speech, had demonstrated that, if Amendment were added to the Bill, the heavens would fall, and the British Empire would stagger to its doom. But that only his play; GORST really obliged to the House for beating them, and Clause would be added to Bill. Done accordingly. Report stage of Factories' Bill run through, and ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 27, 1891 • Various

... well suppose, all this discord made King George and his court happy. He declared that the several states would soon repent, and beg on bended knees to be taken back into the British empire. ...
— Hero Stories from American History - For Elementary Schools • Albert F. Blaisdell

... escapes of this wicked youth. 'Dark providences! the good and benevolent are snatched away; but such a plague as this has his life preserved to pester us still. Short-sighted mortal, "shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"' No life in the British empire was so precious in the sight and gracious purposes of God, as that of the poor depraved lad; which was thus preserved by the special care of ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... and transferred as a free gift to England, as a position necessary for her occupation under the probable contingencies of the Anglo-Turkish alliance, and it should have at once become a portion of the British Empire. Had this course been pursued a mutual confidence would have been established; on the other hand, all back-doors would have been sealed, as we should have been bound by all the laws of honour to defend Turkey to the last ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... as occurred in Hayti and without serious race conflict. Slavery had run its course in Spanish America, and emancipation accompanied or followed the formation of independent republics. In 1833 all slaves in the British Empire were liberated, including those in the important island of Jamaica. So it happened that, just at the time when Southern leaders were making up their minds to defend their peculiar institution at all ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy

... trunks, just as disturbed ants do with eggs, but in this case it was the German passengers who felt disturbed. They were not used to such ways. When they had to duck under a rope to reach the waiting train they grew quite angry, and said they did not think much of the British Empire. But there was worse to come for us all. Breakfast on board had been early and a fog had delayed our arrival. We were all hungry and streamed into the refreshment room. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick

... continued by Napoleon, fitfully carried on throughout the nineteenth century, and facilitated by her installation in Syria—the equivalent of the German Drang nach Osten: a plan incompatible with the safety of the British Empire in the East. This is the truth of the matter, and nothing has been ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... which include members of several nations. Take as an example Switzerland which, although only a very small State, nevertheless comprises three national elements, namely German, French, and Italian. Another example is the British Empire, which is a world empire and comprises a number of ...
— The League of Nations and its Problems - Three Lectures • Lassa Oppenheim

... new objects of industry into the colonial dependencies of the British Empire, is no longer considered a mere subject of speculation, but one well worthy the attention of the eye of science; and the fostering hand of care is beginning to be held out to productions of nature and art, which, if not all equally necessary to the welfare ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds

... expression of countenance and the most polished address. His orthoepy seems to have been acquired by the means which alone can give it perfection: an intimate acquaintance and a constant interview with the best speakers of the senate, the bar, the pulpit, and the stage in the metropolis of the British empire. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various

... born in "the second city of the British Empire," to wit, Bombay, in the month of March, 1901. His birthplace was a hole in an old "Coral" tree. Domestic life in that hole was not conducted with regularity. Meals were at uncertain hours and uncertain also in their quantity and quality. The parents were hunters and were absent for long periods, ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)

... colonies in the cause of the mother-country. Canada, Australia, and New Zealand vied with each other in sending volunteers to fight for and uphold the rights of their fellow-colonists in South Africa, thus giving to the world such an evidence of the unity of the British Empire as it had never before seen. Volunteers from the mother-country, too, rallied round their nation's flag in great numbers, and nobly went forth to maintain her cause on the field ...
— Queen Victoria • Anonymous

... all mankind. Taking any one of these nations—our own for example—we can trace the steps by which the warring elements within it have become reconciled, until finally there has emerged that vast unitary corporation—the British Empire. So with all the others. What more is required therefore than one step further in the same direction, to join up all the States into a single world State. But I am bound to think we are too hasty in treating the unity of mankind ...
— Progress and History • Various

... But mind you calendar the ducal deeds carefully," he said. "A slip in the lineal descent of the Lumptons might affect the whole prestige of the British Empire!" ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... exceptions, such as the consecration by Archbishop Plunket of Dublin of a bishop for the reformed church in Spain, raised so strong a protest as to prove the rule. In the main, then, the expansion of the Anglican Church has followed that of the British empire, or, as in America, of its daughter states; its claim, so far as rights of jurisdiction are concerned, is to be the Church of England and the English race, while recognizing its special duties towards the non-Christian populations ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 2, Part 1, Slice 1 • Various

... an Englishman—the event on which to found a claim of ancestral distinction. More than seven hundred years divide these two events. With the Revolution, our history as a nation began; before that we were a group of colonies, each a part of the British Empire. We fought single-handed with Indians, it is true, and we cooperated with the mother country in wresting the continent from the French, but all this history, in a technical sense, is English history rather than the history of the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... connection with Great Britain. We believe the Colonies were right in their revolt. But if the circumstances had been different,—if since the reign of William III. they had nominated or controlled almost every Prime Minister, had shaped the policy of the British Empire, had enjoyed not only a representation in Parliament, but in the basis of representation had been favored with a special discrimination in their favor against Kent and Yorkshire,—if both in the House of Lords ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... and writers," I again said, "you'll see they'll be slow to let go their English market by making books that would be illegible throughout the British Empire." ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister

... Walsh, Limited British Empire and Continental Copyright Excepting Scandinavian Countries by ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale

... superior virtue for America or to appeal to the strong current of anti-British sentiment. But the British foreign office exists and operates apart from the tradition of liberalism which has mainly actuated English domestic politics. It stands peculiarly for the Empire side of the British Empire, no matter what party is in the saddle in domestic affairs. Every resource will be employed to bring about a settlement at the Pacific Conference which, even though it includes some degree of compromise on the part ...
— China, Japan and the U.S.A. - Present-Day Conditions in the Far East and Their Bearing - on the Washington Conference • John Dewey

... on the part of the British empire that we have observed is the welcome extended to the "quick lunch." ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... the man at the wheel, who was one of those broad-shouldered, big-chested, loose-garmented, wide-trousered, bare-necked, free-and-easy, off-hand jovial tars who have done so much, in years gone by, to increase the wealth and prosperity of the British Empire, and who, although confessedly scarce, are considerately allowed to perish in hundreds annually on our shores for want of a little reasonable legislation. But cheer up, ye jolly tars! There is a glimmer of sunrise on your political horizon. It really does seem as if, in regard to you, there were ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... organisation prevailed, and everywhere from Pole to Equator his property and his responsibilities extended. The whole world was civilised; the whole world dwelt in cities; the whole world was property. Over the British Empire and throughout America his ownership was scarcely disguised, Congress and Parliament were usually regarded as antique, curious gatherings. And even in the two Empires of Russia and Germany, the influence of his wealth was conceivably of enormous weight. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... propagandists and treat them as a terrier treats a rat. So this was a war for democracy! The bankers of Paris had for the last twenty years been subsidizing the Russian Tsars, who had shipped a hundred thousand exiles to Siberia to make the world safe for democracy! The British Empire also had gone to war for democracy—first in Ireland, then in India and Egypt, then in the Whitechapel slums! No, said Ashton, the workers were not to be fooled with such bunk. Wall Street had loaned some billions of dollars ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair

... BRITISH EMPIRE, the name now loosely given to the whole aggregate of territory, the inhabitants of which, under various forms of government, ultimately look to the British crown as the supreme head. The term "empire" is in this connexion obviously used rather for convenience ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... have done so much had it not been for the intervention of a lady whose name deserves to be immortal so long as the British Empire paints itself red upon the map; but Florence Nightingale had enlisted the sympathy of English hearts more quickly than the Queen's shilling had enlisted fighting men, and the Crimean hospitals were the centre of a thousand ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray

... is a self-acting galvano-hydraulic engine, which will entirely supersede the use of steam, and, by preventing the consumption of coal now going on, will avert, or at least postpone, the decline of the British Empire. Able men have calculated that, in the course of a couple of hundred years or so, our coal-beds will be exhausted. I have gone over their calculations and detected several flaws in them, which, when corrected, show a very different result—namely, that in seventeen or eighteen years from this ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... of Queen Victoria caused the people of the United States deep and heartfelt sorrow, to which the Government gave full expression. When President McKinley died, our Nation in turn received from every quarter of the British Empire expressions of grief and sympathy no less sincere. The death of the Empress Dowager Frederick of Germany also aroused the genuine sympathy of the American people; and this sympathy was cordially reciprocated by Germany when the President was assassinated. Indeed, ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... upon the protection of the English, were induced to lay down their arms, and the Hottentots to return to their former masters. The colony was then given up to the Dutch, and remained with them until the year 1806, when it was finally annexed to the British empire. The Dutch had not learned wisdom from what had occurred; they treated the Hottentots worse than before, maiming them and even murdering them in their resentment, and appeared to defy the British government; but a change was soon ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat

... practical efficiency were, during the whole of his Kingship, yoked to the service of a great ideal. He was animated every day of his Sovereignty by the thought that he was at once the head and the chief servant of that vast complex organism which we call the British Empire. He recognized in the fullest degree both the powers and the limitations of a Constitutional Monarch. Here, at home, he was, though no politician, as every one knows, a keen Social Reformer. He loved his people at home and over the seas. Their interests were his interests; ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty

... group whose members have the same habits in every respect. The same man is at the same time a member of several groups, and in each group he has companions who differ from those he has in the others. A French Canadian belongs to the British Empire, the Catholic Church, the group of French-speaking people. Thus the different groups overlap each other in a way that makes it impossible to divide humanity into sharply distinct ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... however, could not say that he was trying to overthrow the empire, for he was merely struggling for the liberty guaranteed by the empire. "In all the British Empire," said he, "there are no subjects more loyal than we. We are English today, we are not a conquered people, we are English people." He was convinced that if England would give the rights of Englishmen ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various



Words linked to "British Empire" :   British Guiana, Republic of India, India, British West Indies, Canada, geographical area, geographical region, British West Africa, Guyana, geographic region, geographic area, Co-operative Republic of Guyana, British East Africa, Bharat, New Zealand, Commonwealth of Australia, British Isles, Australia



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