Hello, welcome to history here at Oak National Academy.

My name's Mr. Newton, and I'll be your teacher today guiding you through the entire lesson.

Right, let's get started.

Over the next few lessons, we'll be thinking about our big inquiry question, why did the British Empire grow in the 17th and 18th centuries? This is the question we will use to investigate how a tiny archipelago of the west coast of Europe came to all over the biggest empire the world has ever seen.

So firstly, you might be asking, what is an empire? Empire has been a dominant unit of human organisations since at least the ancient period.

What this means is that our modern idea of a unified nation with clearly defined borders did not really exist.

For most of history, people understood they were usually ruled by a tribe, kingdom, or empire.

What tended to happen was that people came under the influence of powerful rulers who had the military capacity to carve out and maintain a territory, an empire.

So a crucial question of world history is how Britain, by the end of the 19th century, comes to rule over many of the oceans and controlled a quarter of the world's land surface.

Historians are incredibly interested in the period leading up to that point, a period when Britain rose to be a dominant world power.

So let's start our investigation at the beginning of the long 18th century.

By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to describe the relationship between England and her overseas trade and colonies in 1688.

So before we begin, there are a few keywords that we need to understand.

A privateer is a person allowed by a government to attack and steal from ships at sea.

Customs duties are a tax paid on goods that are imported.

An indentured servant is a person who's made to work without pay for a set period of time, essentially becoming temporarily enslaved.

A mercantilist refers to an economic practise of a country protecting their own trade and discouraging trade with rival nations.

So today's lesson is splits up into three parts.

We'll first look at England in 1688 and see what's happening internally in England as a country before looking at England's actions in the world and the colonies that have developed.

And then finally, we go on to look at mercantilism and colonial rivals.

Right, let's begin the lesson with England in 1688.

So the timeline shows the conventional calendar understanding of the 18th century, 100 years from 1700 to 1800.

However, the long 18th century is a phrase used by historians to describe the developments that occurred between approximately 1688 and 1815.

Some historians feel this is a more natural or appropriate start and endpoint, rather than using the calendar definition of a century.

So the long 18th century began with the Glorious Revolution in 1688 and ended after the Battle of Waterloo.

Napoleon had been defeated and peace had been achieved in Europe.

So during the long 18th century, there were radical transformations taking place in England.

There was much war in Europe and across the world.

And somehow Britain emerged as a global empire.

So we need to find out why and how that happened.

So as we've said, it's quite surprising that England goes on to be such a dominant world power, given that previously it'd been quite a lightweight empire-builder.

For over a thousand years, England and indeed Europe had been relatively primitive when compared to developments that had emerged elsewhere in the world.

If you have a look at the map, this shows the major empires of the world in 1700.

And we can use this map to tell a story of the imperial world that England is actually stepping into.

So we can see the vast Russian empire, that's the massive blue territory in the northeast, sort of top right of the map.

This has previously been rule by Peter the Great, and then later Catherine the Great, and it became the third largest empire in history.

And if we look south of the Russian Empire, the yellow bits of land, here there had been a sequence of Chinese empires, which spanned over a thousand years.

Famous for their scientific advancements, previously the Chinese had developed technologies such as gunpowder well before the Europeans.

In 1700, the Chinese Empire was known as the Qing dynasty.

And now if we look west of the Qing dynasty, we can see the Mughal Empire.

That's the peachy coloured territory.

The Mughals were originally Muslim warlords from Central Asia, and they conquered large parts of India in the 16th century.

They became an incredibly wealthy empire responsible for producing 24% of the total goods and services in the world.

This was at the time when England produced just 3%.

So this really tells us how much of a lightweight England was at the time.

And as you'll remember that England had been desperate to trade with India and China for hundreds of years previously to buy the silks and spices of these faraway lands.

And you're probably noticing that I'm using words like China, India, and Russia to describe these states.

But it's important to remember that our modern idea of these nations and their borders did not really exist.

Over times, these borders shifted and were often contested by different peoples and rulers.

Okay, let's move on to the Ottoman Empire.

That's the red bit of territory in the centre of the map, often referred to as the Middle East.

This area had produced some of the most eminent scholars of the world.

Europe had adopted the mathematical concept of zero and rediscovered Greek philosophy such as Aristotle from this region.

In the 13th century, the Turks built the Ottoman Empire, which would last hundreds of years right up until 1923, and we can see that in 1700 it spanned across Asia, Africa, and Europe.

And we can also see multiple empires across Africa.

You may notice a collection of empires in West Africa.

Just 30 years before the date of this map, many of those empires came under one empire, the Mali Empire, which was renowned for the wealth of its rulers, especially Mansa Musa.

When Musa travelled to Mecca on a pilgrimage in 1326, he was said to have brought with him 12,000 slaves, each of whom carried a bar of solid gold.

So we can see then that the world was full of empires, but you may be asking yourself, what about Europe? So for a thousand years after the collapse of the Roman Empire in Europe, no single unitary power really managed to establish itself for any extended amount of time.

There were lots of mini empires as you've seen in Africa, but no European empire was ever built beyond Europe during that time.

However, during the Renaissance in the 15th century, European thinkers began to learn about how to navigate the globe.

As a result, Christopher Columbus was able to sail across the Atlantic ocean and land in the Americas in 1492.

The Americas, meaning both North and South America.

Spain and Portugal were at the forefront of this exploration.

This was later followed by the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of vast territories in the Americas, which had previously been conquered and ruled by great empires such as the Aztecs and the Incas.

If we have a look at the Americas, we can see Spain in the light green had established vast colonies across the Caribbean, North and South America, and also smaller colonies in Africa and Asia.

And Portugal in the dark green have an empire which stretches right across South America to smaller colonies in Africa and Asia.

So we can see then that by 1688, this is the world that England is trying to establish itself in, surrounded by imperial giants, giant empires.

But we can see that England had started to build its own empire in North America as the pink bit on the east coast.

However, the way it started was quite a haphazard and ad hoc way as if they fell into it by accident.

It was thought that Britain's empire began in a fit of absence of mind.

Later though, historians have concluded that Britain consciously copied the other more advanced empires of the day.

But before we get to that, there were already important developments which have occurred in England itself.

England had established a strong base from which to grow an empire.

Since the 14th century, England had developed a vibrant economy and many people had higher wages than usual.

Have a look at the diagram showing English society.

You can see the upper class at the top, which is the monarch, the aristocracy, lords and ladies, et cetera, then we have the middle class, and then we have the lower class, traditionally farm labourers and peasants and the like.

And as I've said already, since the 14th century, England had started to develop into a very wealthy economy, and many people had higher wages.

So what this meant was that their middle class actually started to grow.

So now you have a huge middle class.

This was sometimes referred to the middling sort who had all maintained high wages.

So how did this happen? England was highly efficient in agriculture, which led to increased food production and population growth.

This freed up labour to work elsewhere as less people were required to work in the fields, to grow crops, et cetera.

So many people could take on dual occupations, for example, working in agriculture, but also working in other industries.

So this resulted in the growth of other industries such as wool production and textiles.

So by 1688, England and Wales still only had a population of around five million.

Nonetheless, England had a wealthy economy with a substantial middling sort, a mass of people who are between the poor and the rich.

So what was the significance of this? Well, it was important, because it meant that a larger percentage of the population had extra money to spend, and once these people had that extra money to spend, something new happened.

Something quite surprising that had not been seen in the world before.

People adopted radically new economic behaviour.

What that meant was that they wanted to buy things they hadn't bought before.

Previously, many of these people would spend their money on the basics, food and shelter, et cetera, but now they had extra money left over to spend on other things.

People started to buy more expensive, comfortable furniture, luxury clothing, and tasty exotic foods.

People also began to work more to feed their ever increasing appetite for luxury.

Some of the most expensive and luxurious goods had to be shipped in from far-flung destinations.

This relative prosperity at home encouraged some Britons to expand links with increasingly distant parts of the world.

These merchants and business-minded people knew the risks, but they also knew they could make money because there was a prosperous market back home in England that wanted to buy their exotic goods.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

Why was England considered a lightweight empire-builder at the beginning of the 18th century? A, because it had a small population.

B, because it had few colonies.

C, because it lacked efficient agriculture.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew it was B, because it had few colonies.

Okay, let's have another check here.

What were the consequences of England's efficient agriculture? Select three correct answers.

A, expansion in number of farm workers.

B, growth of a substantial middle class.

C, increased food production.

D, population growth.

Pause the video, select your three correct answers, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew the correct answers were B, growth of a substantial middle class, C, increased food production, and D, population growth.

Okay, let's continue the story.

So perhaps surprisingly, Britain's global empire began with privateers in the Caribbean.

Early English colonisation was largely a private affair exemplified by individuals such as the Welsh sea captain Henry Morgan, who you can see in the illustration on the left.

Morgan had become wealthy by stealing the proceeds of Spain's empire.

As you will remember, Spain and Portugal had extensive colonies in the Americas.

So let me give you an example of the type of activities that Captain Henry Morgan was involved in.

So in December, 1663, Captain Henry Morgan embarked on a perilous voyage to the Caribbean.

With sails billowing in the tropical breeze, Morgan and his crew of hardened buccaneers set course for a daring mission, a spectacular raid on the Spanish outpost in the Caribbean.

The objective of Morgan's expedition was straightforward, to see Spanish gold and any other valuables they could find.

As the sun rose over Gran Granada, the tranquil morning was shattered by the thunderous roar of gunfire.

Morgan's men fired a volley that echoed through the town, overturning 18 great guns in a deafening clash.

They quickly overrun the Spanish defences and captured their troops.

For 16 relentless hours, the buccaneers looted the town, leaving no stone unturned.

When the raid was over, Morgan's crew released the Spanish troops, but sank all their boats to prevent any pursuit and then vanished into the Caribbean seas, their ships laden with treasure.

This raid was just the beginning of one of the most extraordinary series of smash-and-grab sprees, marking the early violent days of what would become the British Empire.

Contrary to what you might expect, the British Empire was not initially planned and plotted by government officials and imperialists seeking to conquer and rule new territories.

Instead, it was forged in the chaos of seaborne violence and essentially piracy.

Morgan and his fellow buccaneers were thieves preying on the wealth of the Spanish Empire.

However, I should point out that their raids were actually sanctioned by the English government who saw it as a cheap way to wage war against their European rival Spain.

Protestant England felt threatened by Catholic Spain's expansion and global influence.

So the English crown licenced these pirates as privateers.

They legalised their activities in return for a share of the loot.

By the late 17th century, Morgan had invested his stolen gold in buying land in Jamaica.

He bought almost 5,000 acres of land ideal for cultivating sugar cane.

The image on the left is an illustration of Captain Morgan preparing his land for cultivation, and we can imagine how he planned to now make his money by selling sugar back to the prosperous market back home in England.

He knew that sugar was fast becoming very popular as it was used to add to drinks and food to make them taste sweet.

Before this, England relied on using things like honey or fruits to provide a sweet flavour.

So as you can imagine, the introduction of sugar was incredibly popular.

Eventually, the British monarchy started to earn a fortune from the customs duties on imports of Jamaican sugar.

So let's have a look at the map to understand how that would work.

What had happened was that the merchants would take sugar from plantations such as Henry Morgan's and ship them to England to be sold there.

And we can see a merchant ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean sailing towards England.

However, the monarch would instruct merchants that if you wish to sell your sugar here, you must pay the monarch a tax.

This tax was known as a customs duty.

It was only after the English monarchy earned a fortune from the customs duties on imports of Jamaican sugar that they decided to fortify the area in Jamaica to protect the trade that was making them wealthy.

This began the state's involvement in empire.

The British established a colony and made Morgan the acting governor of Jamaica.

The reason we've spent some time looking at the story of Henry Morgan's career is because he is a classic example of the way British Empire started out, using ambitious freelancers or private individuals as much as official forces.

So to simplify, Britain's early empire-building process involved enterprising individuals, not always privateers, establishing plantations, and then later gaining political power.

For example, the Virginia Company managed to establish the first successful colony in North America.

Previous colonists often didn't survive.

We can see the Virginia Company's initial plantation in the illustration on the left.

Virginia Company was a private company, and they tried to find the right crop that would grow well there.

They named their colony Jamestown after James I who granted the company's charter, their licence sought permission to explore and cultivate new territories in North America.

They eventually struck upon the cultivation of tobacco.

Smoking had become a newly popular habit in England, and once again, there was a prosperous middling sort who were ready to depart with their cash to buy into the latest fashionable habit of smoking.

The Virginia plantation and colony survived in what is now the US state of Virginia.

Another example happened later in 1620, a group of Puritans who faced significant religious persecution fled Europe to establish a plantation in America, which they named Plymouth.

That's modern day Massachusetts.

This developed into a colony which made profit from fish, fur, and farming.

Soon there was a network of colonies in the Americas, with English merchants connecting Atlantic plantations with their mother country England.

The merchant shipped the finest English woollen cloth across the Atlantic and returned with sugar and tobacco.

England's appetite for these goods from the Americas was insatiable.

The middling sort brought these items until the stocks ran dry.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

How is Captain Henry Morgan's career a reflection of England's early empire building process? A, he was a private individual who conquered large territories for England.

B, he was a private individual who established a plantation and later gained political power.

C, he was sent by the monarch to colonise the Americas before Spain and Portugal could.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay.

Welcome back and well done if you knew the correct answer was B.

He was a private individual who established a plantation and later gained political power.

Okay, great, let's move on to task A.

What I want you to do here is complete the following sentence starters.

And you can see I've given you four sentence starters.

So for the first one, England was considered a lightweight empire-builder because, and I want you to finish that sentence, and then go on to complete.

You have three sentence starters.

Pause the video, have a go at the task, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back.

So there's many ways you could have completed your sentences, but your answers may include the following.

So the first sentence began, England was considered a lightweight empire-builder because compared to advanced empires like the Ottoman and Chinese, it had fewer colonies and was relatively primitive until later developments.

Now, for the second sentence starter, developments in England's agriculture increased food production, led to population growth, and raised domestic wages, resulting in a substantial middle class that supported overseas trade and settlements.

Then the third sentence, Henry Morgan was a privateer who invested his stolen gold in Jamaican land, established plantations, and later became acting governor, reflecting England's early empire-building process.

And finally, a network of colonies was connected to England via trade, where English merchants exchanged goods like wool for sugar and tobacco, fueling England's appetite for overseas products.

So now we've got some context of England in 1688 and how it began to develop overseas trade.

Now let's delve deeper into England's colonies in 1688.

By the end of the 17th century, 350,000 people had emigrated to colonies in the Americas.

This was because the colonies needed people to work in their plantations.

Thousands spent their life savings on securing a one-way ticket, drawn by the prospect of liberty.

This could be religious freedom or economic freedom, such as cheap land or just generally searching for a better way of life than they had back home.

However, most migrants to the colonies in the Americas were indentured servants, essentially becoming temporarily enslaved.

People became indentured servants through various ways.

This could be to escape poverty.

Vulnerable people such as orphans were often tricked into servitude.

And many criminals were forced as part of their punishment to become an indentured servants, or sometimes they might have to work off a debt that they owed.

Indentured servitude was a labour system which was crucial for colonies like Virginia.

Like enslaved people, indentured servants were advertised for sale in the newspaper, where plantation owners could buy them for their workforce.

However, many indentured servants died, particularly in the harsh Caribbean climates.

Before setting off from the British Isles, most indentured servants would have little idea of what was involved.

One such person was John Harrower, who captured his experience in his journal.

For months, John had roamed Scotland in search of work to no avail.

With his last shilling spent, his last money gone, he had no choice but to sign up as an indentured servant, exchanging four years of his life for the promise of basic necessities and a small payment with which he hoped he could support his family with.

His journal entry on Wednesday the 26th of January, 1774 captures the desperation that led him to become an indentured servant.

"This day I was reduced to my last shilling.

I was forced to go to Virginia for four years.

They say I'll have a place to stay there if I sign up." So we can see then, for John, it was not an adventure or a bid for freedom, but a last resort to support his family.

His journey began aboard a ship called the Planter, but it was far from smooth sailing.

One night as a fierce Atlantic storm battered the ship, Harrow had described a horrific scene below deck as disease and dysentery had spread across the ship with the passenger suffering symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhoea.

People were so fearful they began to pray.

However, this did not stop the ship's crew subjecting the passengers to harsh discipline, including whippings and being clamped in iron chains if they misbehaved.

After more than two gruelling months at sea, John finally arrived in Virginia.

Fortunately, at this time in Britain, there were relatively high literacy levels, meaning that there was a large percentage of the population that could read and write.

And John's ability to read and write quickly made him an asset, and he was hired as a tutor for the children of a local plantation owner.

However, his fortunes did not improve much from there.

In 1777, after just three years in Virginia, John fell ill and died, unable to fulfil his dream of bringing his wife and children to join him.

John's story was not unique.

Many people were driven from their homes by economic hardship, poor harvest, or often landlords had raised rents to unaffordable levels.

John's early death was also far from unusual.

Nearly two in five new arrivals in Virginia died within their first couple of years.

However, the mortality rate was even worse for indentured servants in the Caribbean.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

How many people had emigrated to colonies in the Americas by the end of the 17th century? A, 150,000, B, 250,000, C, 350,000.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew the correct answer was C, 350,000.

In the Caribbean, the demand for labour led to a shift from indentured servitude to African slavery to maintain the production of crops, which would commence the horrific suffering endured by enslaved people from the transatlantic slave trade.

The Caribbean colonies soon became the most important source of income for British traders in the Atlantic world.

Private individuals like Henry Morgan who had established plantations in the Caribbean made large fortunes.

Based on the work of enslaved Africans, plantation owners began producing sugar, which has been consumed ever more regularly in food and drink in England, which formed the basis of the wealth generated by those who traded across the Atlantic.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

How did most migrants from the British Isles afford their tickets to the Americas? A, they became indentured servants working for a set period for free to pay off their passage.

B, they secured loans from banks working for free for a set period to pay off their loan.

Or C, they were funded by the British government, working for free a set period before returning home.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew the correct answer was A, they became indentured servants working for a set period for free to pay off their passage.

Okay, great, let's move on to task B.

Working with your partner, describe how migration and slavery populated the colonies.

And I want you to try to refer to the following, why people wanted to leave their home in the British Isles, how indentured servitude enabled emigration to the colonies, and why there was a shift to slavery.

Pause the video, have a go at the task, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back.

So there's many things that you may have come up with there, but your answer may include some of the following.

So many migrants were searching for religious or economic freedom, cheap land, and new opportunities in the colonies.

Indentured servitude allowed impoverished individuals to work for a set period for free in exchange for passage to the colonies, providing a vital labour force for plantations.

However, the high mortality rates among indentured servants because of the horrendous working conditions meant that colonists began purchasing enslaved Africans to work on plantations.

Okay, let's move on to the final part of the lesson, mercantilism and colonial rivals.

So so far in the lesson, we've focused mainly on what was happening in England and the Americas.

However, England had also established trade with India and the East Indies.

The map shows the trade route from England to India and the East Indies.

These were the various islands in East Asia, in and around the Indian Ocean.

A private company, the East India Company was given permission by Elizabeth I to trade with India.

This meant that no other English company was permitted to trade with that part of the world.

Goods from India would have to pass through the East India Company before they could be imported to England.

The East India Company wanted to gain access to the trade in spices, cotton, indigo, and chintzes, these were colourful fabrics that the region had to offer.

India at the time was part of a vast and wealthy empire ruled by the Mughals.

And as you'll remember, India was responsible for producing 24% of the total goods and services in the world.

England produced just 3%.

And we can see how powerful the Mughals were from the illustration on the left.

It shows a leader of the East India Company on his knees begging to be pardoned by the Mughal Emperor.

So whilst there were no English colonies in India, the Mughal Emperor accepted the East India Company as a trading partner, and by 1688 had granted permission for two factories.

We can see a factory in the painting on the left.

This is the East India Company factory in Bombay, which is modern day Mumbai.

Factories were basically large warehouses used to house the cloths, silks, and dyes which the company purchased before they were ready to be shipped back to England.

The factories were fortified to protect the goods inside, so the factories were essentially fortified trading posts.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

In which areas had England established colonies in by 1688? Select two correct answers.

A, Caribbean, B, India, C, North America, D, South America.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back and well done if you knew the correct answer was A, the Caribbean, and C, North America.

Perhaps a bit of a trick question there.

Might have got caught out by choosing India.

However, at this point, there's no colonies in India.

It's merely a trading partnership between the East India Company and the Mughal Emperor, with the East India Company having two factories there.

However, the East India Company was not alone in the Indian Ocean.

The Dutch East India company dominated the area.

This company was the Netherlands-equivalent of the East India Company.

However, they were far more established in the region and had larger fleets.

The English East India Company attempted to monopolise Asian trade to prevent competitors, especially the Dutch, from capturing market share.

The English government also passed a series of laws known as the Navigation Acts, which promoted English shipping and controlled colonial trade.

The Navigation Acts were part of a wider mercantilist framework that England had adopted to protect overseas trade in America and India.

The laws required that goods imported to England or its colonies be transported in English ships.

The goal was to ensure that the economic benefits of colonial trade flowed back to England and reduced reliance on foreign, particularly Dutch shipping and trade networks.

England also grew its navy in an attempt to get the upper hand, but in 1674, England was humiliatingly defeated after being involved in three wars against the Dutch.

And we can see an illustration of a naval battle between the English and the Dutch on the left.

Therefore, the East India Company was driven away from the Spice Islands of the East Indies.

In 1688, however, the colonial rivalry between England and the Dutch was brought to an end when the Glorious Revolution resulted in a Dutch monarch, William of Orange, being invited to take the English crown.

We can see a painting on the left of William III, William of Orange of the Dutch Republic, and Mary II, the daughter of the English king James II, who were joint monarchs of England.

One result of this was that England agreed to focus its trade on the dyes and textiles, which the Indian subcontinents had to offer, instead of the spices in the East Indies.

So then at the close of 1688, England had dipped her toes into the waters of empire building.

However, England was still a small fish in a big pond, competing with the imperial giants, such as the Dutch, France, Spain, and the Mughals, all of whom had their own well-established colonies and trade routes.

Okay, let's have a check for understanding.

What was the purpose of the Navigation Acts? A, to encourage free trade with all nations.

B, to promote English shipping and control colonial trade.

C, to reduce customs duties in order to promote trade.

Pause the video, have a think, and then come right back.

Okay.

Welcome back and well done if you knew the correct answer was B, to promote English shipping and control colonial trade.

Okay, great, let's move on to task C.

What I want you to do here is describe the relationship between England and her overseas trade and colonies in 1688.

You only need to write one paragraph on one of the following.

So choose either early empire building and emigration to the Americas, or England's mercantilist framework.

Pause the video, have a go at the task, and then come right back.

Okay, welcome back, and well done for having a go at that task.

So there's many ways you could have answered this question, but compare your answer with what I have here.

So here's what your answer could have looked like if you'd chosen England's early empire building and the Americas.

The relationship between England and her colonies in 1688 was characterised by a combination of privateers, plantations, and a demand for exotic goods.

Adventurous individuals, like Captain Henry Morgan, and enterprising companies, such as the Virginia Company, established plantations in the Americas.

More colonies were established when the English monarchy earned a fortune from the customs duties.

A network of colonies provided a market for English goods like wool, and in return supplied highly demanded products such as sugar and tobacco to an extensive middle class in England.

The workforce for colonial plantations was first made up of indentured servants, but the horrendous working conditions meant colonists switched to exploiting the labour of enslaved Africans, creating conditions in which huge profits in Britain were the result of the trade in enslaved people.

If you chose to write your paragraph on England's mercantilist framework, your answer may look something like this.

England's relationship with her colonies was defined by economic policies aimed at maximising the benefits of colonial trade for the mother country.

The Navigation Acts were a crucial part of a mercantilist framework, and ordered that goods imported to England or its colonies be transported on English ships.

These laws ensured that colonial profits flowed back to England.

However, the trade in the East Indies was dictated by the Mughal Emperor and England faced significant competition from other European powers, including Spain in the Americas and the Dutch in the East Indies.

The combination of these efforts resulted in a more structured and economically integrated empire poised to expand further in the 18th century.

Okay, great, let's summarise today's lesson, England's empire at the beginning of the long 18th century.

At the beginning of the long 18th century, England was a lightweights empire-builder.

However, England had a substantial middle class that supported overseas trade and settlement.

A network of colonies was connected to England via trade and the monarch profited from customs duties.

Many migrants searching for a better life headed to the Americas.

Most were indentured servants.

However, after many deaths, the plantation shifted their labour force towards enslaved African people.

The Navigation Acts were a crucial part of a mercantilist framework that ensured that colonial profits flowed back to England.

Okay, well done on a brilliant lesson, and thank you for joining me for the beginning of our story of how a tiny set of islands off the west coast of Europe embarked on a journey towards empire.

And I will see you next time when we continue our inquiry.

See you in the next lesson.