The defeat of the Armada left Britain with a position of authority and more importantly, a wealthy income. Some of this income was claimed from the Spanish and their treasuries after their defeat. This was known as mercantilism. After this victorious win, mostly due to the engineering of Britain’s ships and the large prestigious royal navy, Britain set up colonies and plantations across the east coast of north America. Britain also established companies in India and Africa.
This view is largely accredited because Pitt came into office in a difficult time but events around him seemed to benefit him rather well. Britain was entering the industrial revolution at the time, industry rose up and trade would boom due to expansion of the industries at home and abroad, the advancements of technology meant that Britain was going through a natural change that arguably Pitt was able to captain through leading to better fortunes. The natural opposition from the Whig party against the king led by Charles Fox meant that Pitt naturally had the Kings support against any opposition which could be thrown at him, the king would back him up. The American Revolution and his lack of connection to it meant that he was seen as a new politician not one of the previously failed governments who’s lack of control and rule in a situation. And lastly the regency crisis of 1788 meant that Pitt could use this to gain favour with the king and gather support from his own party and draw it away from the opposition.
According to Robert Tombs in his book ‘France 1814 – 1914’, Britain’s expansion was ‘motivated by finance, trade, strategy, ideology and accident’. There were several territories within the British Empire, ‘like the Transvaal, Egypt and the Yangtse valley’ which provided great profit. It is believed by some historians that the British conquest of Egypt in 1882 took place because the British wanted to gain a profit from the area. The same can be said about all the European powers and their presence in Africa. At the end of the nineteenth Century, The British extended their control in Sierra Leon, Ashantiland and Niger.
The British expanded for numerous reasons. However this resulted in positive and negative effects on the conquered lands. British Imperialism was caused by many reasons. They expanded throughout many lands mainly due to economic reasons. According to Documents 3a and 3b, the British created an empire so they could sell cotton and iron goods.
These other causes are all political social and economical factors which helped to free the serfs. And had the Tsar taken a more liberal view on his rule the emancipation may never have happened. Firstly there are many political causes for the emancipation of the serfs. The bankruptcy of nobles who were the tsar’s main supporters was, caused because of the inefficiency of using serfs to farm lands, which meant most nobles were losing money and by 1860 over 60% of serfs were mortgaged to the government meaning they were “unofficially” no longer tied to their land. This meant serfdom was already coming to its own natural end, and for Alexander II to support his nobles he had to emancipate the serfs so they could go start increasing their wealth and get out of debt.
As England tried to hold its grip on the becoming independent colonies, Britain was in need of a centralized colonial government that should have been established from the beginning. Due to the great distance between America and England and its inefficient policies, the colonies had a great deal of freedom. When Britain decided to enforce their influence and rule on America following the Seven Years War, there was many areas of disagreement that eventually lead to the American Revolution. Following the victory of the French and Indian War, Britain gained control of half of the continent by the scratch of a pen (94). Britain's national debt doubled during the course of the war and the cost of extended empire cause a dramatic increase in the cost of living.
WW1 ends – The ending of WW1 meant that the European countries were able to meet their own demands and therefore did not need any more supplies from America. Farmers suffered from overproduction and could not afford to keep their homes or pay mortgages, some farmers even decided to become sharecroppers. In 1924, 600,000 farmers went bankrupt. Also, there was stiff competition from Canadian, Australian and Argentinean farmers who were selling vast amounts of grain to the world market. Over-production – Fewer products such as cars, consumer good etc were not being sold as factories were making more goods than Americans needed or could afford to buy.
The rising demand for these products fueled the rapid growth of the Atlantic slave trade. The profits from slavery stimulated the rise of British ports such as Liverpool and Bristol, and the growth of banking, shipbuilding, and insurance, and helped to finance the early industrial revolution. The centrality of slavery to the economy of the British empire encouraged an ever-closer identification of freedom with whites and slavery with blacks. This is not to say that all whites enjoyed equality. Many gradations of freedom coexisted in colonial America.
Roosevelt had realized this great potential and purchased the equipment and rights from the French to pursue this project. While at the same time as the purchase, a bitter conflict between Panama and Columbia was taking place, where Roosevelt had stepped in and offered Panama independence from Columbia in exchange for exclusive rights and control of the lands surrounding the projected Panama Canal. Though the building of the Panama Canal was considered one of the greatest achievements of his administration – for it nearly doubled the efficiency of America’s navy , it has also caused conflict and severe criticism against him
There was a constant customer calling for transportation of men and supplies. There was ship building and commerce going on in the eastern ware in Europe. The economy was gained to a financial high when the Crusades made its way to Europe. Even though the crusades were just Christian campaigns fought, it still took a toll on the economy more than people would of thought. It’s said that the first crusade created Latin states on the holy land.