Editing History of the United Kingdom (section)

===British Empire===
{{Main|British Empire}}
[[File:Lord Clive meeting with Mir Jafar after the Battle of Plassey.jpg|thumb|[[Lord Clive]] meeting with [[Mir Jafar]] after the [[Battle of Plassey]], by [[Francis Hayman]] (c. 1762)]]

The [[Seven Years' War]], which began in 1756, was the first war waged on a global scale, fought in Europe, India, North America, the Caribbean, the Philippines and coastal Africa. Britain was the big winner as it enlarged its empire at the expense of France and others. France lost its role as a colonial power in North America. It ceded [[New France]] to Britain, putting a large, traditionalistic French-speaking Catholic element under British control. Spain ceded [[Florida]] to Britain, but it only had a few small outposts there. In India, the [[Carnatic wars#Third Carnatic War (1757–1763)|Carnatic war]] had left France still in control of its [[French India|small enclaves]] but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, effectively leaving the future of India to Britain. [[Great Britain in the Seven Years' War|The British victory over France]] in the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's dominant colonial power.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Jasanoff |first=Maya |title=Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750–1850 |date=2006 |isbn=978-1-40-007546-1 |page=21 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing |author-link=Maya Jasanoff |orig-date=2005}}</ref>
====American Revolution====
During the 1760s and 1770s, relations between the [[Thirteen Colonies]] and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of growing anger against Parliament's repeated attempts to tax American colonists without their consent.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ferguson |first=Niall |url=https://archive.org/details/empire00nial |title=Empire, The rise and demise of the British world order and the lessons for global power |date=2004 |isbn=978-0-46-502328-8 |pages=73 |publisher=Basic Books |author-link=Niall Ferguson |url-access=registration}}</ref> The Americans readied their large militias, but were short of gunpowder and artillery. The British assumed falsely that they could easily suppress Patriot resistance. In 1775 the [[American Revolutionary War]] began. In 1776 the Patriots expelled all the royal officials and [[United States Declaration of Independence|declared the independence of the United States of America]]. After capturing a British invasion army in 1777, the new nation formed an alliance with France (and in turn Spain aided France), equalizing the military and naval balance and putting Britain at risk of invasion from France. The British army controlled only a handful of coastal cities in the U.S. 1780–1781 was a low point for Britain. Taxes and deficits were high, government corruption was pervasive, and the war in America was entering its sixth year with no apparent end in sight. The [[Gordon Riots]] erupted in London during the spring of 1780, in response to increased concessions to Catholics by Parliament. In October 1781 [[Lord Cornwallis]] surrendered his army at [[Siege of Yorktown|Yorktown, Virginia]]. The [[Treaty of Paris (1783)|Treaty of Paris]] was signed in 1783, formally terminating the war and recognising the independence of the United States. The peace terms were very generous to the new nation, which London hoped correctly would become a major trading partner.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Black |first=Jeremy |title=Crisis of Empire: Britain and America in the Eighteenth Century |date=2008 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |isbn=978-1-44-110445-8 |author-link=Jeremy Black (historian)}}</ref>

[[File:Surrender of General Burgoyne.jpg|thumb|British general John Burgoyne shown surrendering at Saratoga (1777), ''[[Surrender of General Burgoyne]]'' painting by [[John Trumbull]], 1822]]
====Second British Empire====
The loss of the Thirteen Colonies, at the time Britain's most populous colonies, marked the transition between the "first" and "second" empires,<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Low |first1=Alaine |title=[[The Oxford History of the British Empire]] |last2=Louis |first2=Wm Roger |date=1998 |editor-last=Canny |editor-first=Nicholas |editor-link=Nicholas Canny |volume=1. The Origins of Empire: British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century |pages=92 |author-link2=Wm. Roger Louis}}</ref> in which Britain shifted its attention to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. [[Adam Smith]]'s ''[[The Wealth of Nations]]'', published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that [[free trade]] should replace the old [[mercantilist]] policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal. The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783<ref>{{Cite book |last=James |first=Lawrence |title=The Rise and Fall of the British Empire |date=2001 |isbn=978-1-46-684213-7 |pages=119 |publisher=St. Martin's Publishing |orig-date=1994}}</ref> confirmed Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.

During its first 100 years of operation, the focus of the [[British East India Company]] had been trade, not the building of an empire in India. Company interests turned from trade to territory during the 18th century as the Mughal Empire declined in power and the British East India Company struggled with its French counterpart, the [[French Indies Company|French East India Company]], during the [[Carnatic wars]] of the 1740s and 1750s. The British, led by [[Robert Clive]], defeated the French and their Indian allies in the [[Battle of Plassey]], leaving the Company in control of [[Bengal]] and a major military and political power in India. In the following decades it gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or indirectly via local puppet rulers under the threat of force of the [[Indian Army]], 80% of which was composed of native Indian [[sepoys]].

[[File:Cookroutes.png|thumb|Voyages of the explorer James Cook]]
On 22 August 1770, [[James Cook]] discovered the eastern coast of Australia<ref>{{Cite book |last=Knibbs |first=G. H. |title=Official year book of the Commonwealth of Australia |date=1908 |publisher=[[Commonwealth Bureau of Census and Statistics]] |page=52 |author-link=George Handley Knibbs}}</ref> while on a scientific [[First voyage of James Cook|voyage]] to the South Pacific. In 1778, [[Joseph Banks]], Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of [[Botany Bay]] for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of [[Convicts in Australia|convicts]] set sail, arriving in 1788.