Editing British Empire (section)

=== Americas, Africa and the slave trade ===
{{Main|British colonisation of the Americas|British America|Thirteen Colonies|British West Indies|Atlantic slave trade}}
[[File:Tobacco cultivation (Virginia, ca. 1670).jpg|thumb|A 1670 illustration of African slaves working in 17th-century [[Colony of Virginia|colonial Virginia]] in [[British America]]]]
England's early efforts at colonisation in the Americas met with mixed success. An attempt to establish a colony in [[British Guiana|Guiana]] in 1604 lasted only two years and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits.{{Sfn|Canny|1998|p=71}} Colonies on the Caribbean islands of [[Saint Lucia|St Lucia]]&nbsp;(1605) and [[Grenada]]&nbsp;(1609) rapidly folded.{{Sfn|Canny|1998|p=221}} The first permanent English settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in [[Jamestown, Virginia|Jamestown]] by Captain [[John Smith (explorer)|John Smith]], and managed by the [[London Company|Virginia Company]]; the Crown took direct control of the venture in 1624, thereby founding the [[Colony of Virginia]].{{Sfn|Andrews|1984|pp=316, 324–326}} [[Bermuda]] was settled and claimed by England as a result of the 1609 shipwreck of the Virginia Company's [[Sea Venture|flagship]],{{Sfn|Lloyd|1996|pp=15–20}} while [[London and Bristol Company|attempts to settle Newfoundland]] were largely unsuccessful.{{Sfn|Andrews|1984|pp=20–22}} In 1620, [[Plymouth Colony|Plymouth]] was founded as a haven by [[Puritan]] religious separatists, later known as the [[Pilgrims (Plymouth Colony)|Pilgrim]]s.{{Sfn|James|2001|p=8}} Fleeing from [[religious persecution]] would become the motive for many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous [[Transatlantic crossing|trans-Atlantic voyage]]: [[Province of Maryland|Maryland]] was established by [[Catholic Church in England and Wales|English Roman Catholics]]&nbsp;(1634), [[Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations|Rhode Island]]&nbsp;(1636) as a colony [[Religious tolerance|tolerant of all religions]] and Connecticut&nbsp;(1639) for [[Congregational church|Congregationalists]]. England's North American holdings were further expanded by the annexation of the Dutch colony of [[New Netherland]] in 1664, following the capture of [[New Amsterdam]], which was renamed [[New York (state)|New York]].{{Sfn|Lloyd|1996|p=40}} Although less financially successful than colonies in the Caribbean, these territories had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far greater numbers of English emigrants, who preferred their temperate climates.{{Sfn|Ferguson|2002|pp=72–73}}<!-- Insert some discussion of interaction with Native Indians here -->

The [[British West Indies]] initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies.{{Sfn|James|2001|p=17}} Settlements were successfully established in [[Saint Kitts|St. Kitts]]&nbsp;(1624), [[Barbados]]&nbsp;(1627) and [[Nevis]]&nbsp;(1628),{{Sfn|Canny|1998|p=221}} but struggled until the "Sugar Revolution" transformed the Caribbean economy in the mid-17th century.<ref name="BBC_Watson">{{Cite web |last=Watson |first=Karl |date=2 February 2011 |title=Slavery and Economy in Barbados |url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/barbados_01.shtml |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120212022845/http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/empire_seapower/barbados_01.shtml |archive-date=12 February 2012 |access-date=5 June 2022 |website=BBC History}}</ref> Large [[Sugar plantations in the Caribbean|sugarcane plantations]] were first established in the 1640s on Barbados, with assistance from Dutch merchants and [[Sephardi Jews|Sephardic Jews]] fleeing [[Colonial Brazil|Portuguese Brazil]]. At first, sugar was grown primarily using white [[Indentured servitude in British America|indentured labour]], but rising costs soon led English traders to embrace the use of imported African slaves.<ref>{{Harvnb|Higman|2000|p=224}}; {{Harvnb|Richardson|2022|p=24}}.</ref> The enormous wealth generated by slave-produced sugar made Barbados the most successful colony in the Americas,{{Sfn|Higman|2000|pp=224–225}} and one of the most densely populated places in the world.<ref name="BBC_Watson"/> This boom led to the spread of sugar cultivation across the Caribbean, financed the development of non-plantation colonies in North America, and accelerated the growth of the [[Atlantic slave trade]], particularly the [[triangular trade]] of slaves, sugar and provisions between Africa, the West Indies and Europe.{{Sfn|Higman|2000|pp=225–226}}

To ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of colonial trade remained in English hands, Parliament [[Navigation Acts|decreed]] in 1651 that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies. This led to hostilities with the [[Dutch Republic|United Dutch Provinces]]—a series of [[Anglo-Dutch Wars]]—which would eventually strengthen England's position in the Americas at the expense of the Dutch.{{Sfn|Lloyd|1996|p=32}} In 1655, England annexed the island of [[Jamaica]] from the Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonising the [[The Bahamas|Bahamas]].{{Sfn|Lloyd|1996|pp=33, 43}}
In 1670, [[Charles II of England|Charles II]] incorporated by royal charter the [[Hudson's Bay Company]] (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the [[North American fur trade|fur trade]] in the area known as [[Rupert's Land]], which would later form a large proportion of the [[Canada|Dominion of Canada]]. Forts and trading posts established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent [[New France]].{{Sfn|Buckner|2008|p=25}}

Two years later, the [[Royal African Company]] was granted a monopoly on the supply of slaves to the British colonies in the Caribbean.{{Sfn|Lloyd|1996|p=37}} The company would transport more slaves across the Atlantic than any other, and significantly grew England's share of the trade, from 33 per cent in 1673 to 74 per cent in 1683.{{Sfn|Pettigrew|2013|page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=8osqAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA11 11]}} The removal of this monopoly between 1688 and 1712 allowed independent British slave traders to thrive, leading to a rapid escalation in the number of slaves transported.{{Sfn|Pettigrew|2007|pages=3–38}} British ships carried a third of all slaves shipped across the Atlantic—approximately 3.5&nbsp;million Africans{{Sfn|Ferguson|2002|p=62}}—until the abolition of the trade by Parliament in 1807 (see {{Section link||Abolition of slavery}}).{{Sfn|Richardson|2022|p=23}} To facilitate the shipment of slaves, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as [[Kunta Kinteh Island|James Island]], [[Jamestown, Ghana|Accra]] and [[Bunce Island]]. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25 per cent in 1650 to around 80 per cent in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10 per cent to 40 per cent over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies).{{Sfn|Canny|1998|p=228}} The transatlantic slave trade played a pervasive role in British economic life, and became a major economic mainstay for western port cities.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Draper |first=N. |date=2008 |title=The City of London and Slavery: Evidence from the First Dock Companies, 1795–1800 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40057514 |url-status=live |journal=The Economic History Review |volume=61 |issue=2 |pages=432–433, 459–461 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-0289.2007.00400.x |issn=0013-0117 |jstor=40057514 |s2cid=154280545 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220608174235/https://www.jstor.org/stable/40057514 |archive-date=8 June 2022 |access-date=8 June 2022}}</ref> Ships registered in [[Bristol]], [[Liverpool]] and [[London]] were responsible for the bulk of British slave trading.{{Sfn|Nellis|2013|p=30}} For the transported, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average [[mortality rate]] during the [[Middle Passage]] was one in seven.{{Sfn|Marshall|1998|pp=440–464}}