BRITISH EMPIRE • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of British Empire

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/brˈɪtɪʃ ˈɛmpaɪər/ Listen

British Empire

noun

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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Etymology of 'British Empire'

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"British empire" Quotes from Famous Books

... "crumbling" on the part of the British empire that we have observed is the welcome extended to the "quick lunch." That ...

— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor

... the dominant 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 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... 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 denial of the authority of Parliament: ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various

... Stanford's window the other day, and it amused me. Who believes for a moment that England will remain satisfied with bits here and there? We have to swallow the whole, of course. We shall go on fighting and annexing, until—until the decline and fall of the British Empire. That hasn't begun yet. Some of us are so over-civilised that it makes a reaction of wholesome barbarism in the rest. We shall fight like blazes in the twentieth century. It's the only thing that keeps Englishmen sound; commercialism ...

— The Whirlpool • George Gissing

... purpose of the author permitted; and we have many striking passages respecting Wilkes and his various persecutions, the Letters of Junius and their authorship, and the common intellectual and material progress of the British empire. The spirit in which he regards our Revolution is illustrated by the following paragraph, on the rejection, by the House of Peers, of the conciliatory Bill by which Lord Chatham hoped, in 1775, to prevent the ...

— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

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