The Dynamics of Expansion

Abstract

The expansion and development of British overseas activity in the eighteenth century was based upon foundations established well before 1700. At the end of the seventeenth century, English settlements in North America were scattered throughout the politically demarcated colonies running along the coast from the Carolinas to Maine, while the Hudson Bay Company engaged in commercial activity in an amorphous region between the Great Lakes and the Arctic littoral. In the Caribbean, Britain had settlements on Antigua, Barbados, Jamaica, Montserrat, Nevis and part of St Kitts. In the Orient, despite several serious setbacks suffered at the hands of the Dutch in the East Indies during the course of the seventeenth century, the East India Company had established itself at Bombay, Madras and Surat. Just before the turn of the century, the Company had acquired several small villages in Bengal and this settlement became Calcutta which grew to be the second city of the British empire by 1775.