Ten Minute History - The Early British Empire (Short Documentary)

1497 and the British Empire didn't exist neither did Britain England was the largest and most powerful country in the British Isles at this time Wales the Isle of Man and the peace of Ireland could the pale were firmly under English control the rest of Ireland was mostly independent only giving lip service to the English monarchy and in the north Scotland remained independent a close ally of France King Henry the seventh of England wish to improve England's trading situation the English were not exactly renowned sailors at this point and so Henry did what everyone else did at the time hired an Italian a certain Giovanni kobato kobato was searching for a northern route to China but landed in North America becoming the first European to set foot there at least since the Vikings had five hundred years earlier Henry the seventh continued the long tradition of English monarchs and died before being succeeded by his son Henry the eighth Henry the eighth contributed to the expansion of English holdings by incorporating Wales into the kingdom of England and giving it representation in Parliament in 1534 Henry split with Rome creating the Church of England which would begin the religious divide between England and Ireland eight years later he had himself declared the king of Ireland although in reality this didn't change very much Henry was succeeded by Edward and shortly after that came Queen Mary the first a Catholic who married king philip ii of spain one important part of mary's rule with the beginning of the irish plantations which sure lands belonging to irish law was confiscated and given to the English for settlement Mary and Philippe never had children and so after Mary's death in 1558 the crown passed to her sister Elizabeth because the English Parliament made sure Philippe was ineligible Elizabeth was a devout Protestant and reinstated many of her father's laws which punish Catholics much to the anger of Philip who saw himself as the defender of Catholicism Spain held the Netherlands at this point and the northern part which is a large Protestant population was rebelling against Spanish rule England was more than happy to help undermine Spain's power and one way the English helped the Dutch was by giving Dutch privateers shelter in English ports so privateers were essentially pirates who had the protection of a government and Elizabeth employed many Spain had a growing colonial empire at this point and there was a lot of trade particularly in silver between Spain and its colonies privateers would seize this cargo by raiding Spanish ports and ships before taking it back to England the most famous of England's privateers is Sir Francis Drake who conducted numerous highly profitable raids against the Spanish he also circumnavigated the globe and even claimed land what is now California beyond private is England also sent explorers to the new world such as Sir Walter Raleigh who set up a soon to be mysteriously abandoned colony at Roanoke Island in North America Elizabeth also continued Irish plantations to shore up the English position their exploration and colonization at this time was almost always reliant some royal patronage in order to get funded English Spanish relations were not improved by England's moves across the Atlantic since been claimed nearly all of the new world and also losing silver was presumably not much fun for Philippe either relations worsened when Portugal England's oldest ally had a succession crisis which saw Philippe crowned its king the final straw for Philippe was when Elizabeth had Mary the Queen of Scots beheaded in 1587 the reasons for this are complex but it was essentially because Elizabeth did not want Scotland returning to Catholicism so Philippe now pretty fed up ordered the creation of an armada which was to sail to the Netherlands before invading England when the Amada reached England several skirmishes occurred the most famous being the Battle of the Gravelines were an English victory forced the Spanish fleet to sail around the British Isles in order to return to Spain storms a lack of food and disease caused thousands on the return journey in this failure pretty much bankrupted Spain the next year England chose to counter-attack and launch the English Armada under the command of Sir Francis Drake the goals of the Armada were to destroy the remaining Spanish ships the revolt in Portugal and intercept any Spanish Silber so the English Armada was a complete failure and cost the lives of thousands of English sailors and was very expensive it did however guarantee that England would remain independent towards the end of her reign Elizabeth made one last contribution to the Empire and founded the East India Company which was given a monopoly on trade with India Elizabeth died childless in 1603 and was succeeded by James the sixth of Scotland who was crowned James the first of England changes early reign saw the end of the war with Spain and was marked by several attempts to kill him most notably the Gunpowder Plot James contributed to the empire by sponsoring colonial ventures he sponsored another way for plantations in Ireland most notably the Ulster plantation which contained many Scottish settlers alongside English ones James also oversaw the first permanent English settlement in the Americas the colony at Jamestown next was Bermuda followed by Plymouth which was famously founded by the Puritans who arrived from the Mayflower so Jamestown was founded by the Virginia Company of London with the goal of making its shareholders a profit the colony was famously led by John Smith who maintained good relations with the Native Americans Smith was forced to return to England after being injured in a gunpowder explosion and 4-time relations between the English and the natives remained peaceful these good relations wouldn't last and soon the English and natives were fighting and after several wars the English managed to push the natives out of the area in order to grow the cash crops on which the colony relied indentured servants were imported in this context indentured servants were people who sold themselves into a form of servitude for a period in order to pay for their voyage to the New World indentured servants were soon replaced with slaves from Africa since there was no obligation to free them and they were easier to obtain Indian raids against the colony and rebellions against neglectful rule made it very difficult to make a profit and the colony was turned over to the English crown there were many reasons for colonial expansion there was a strong desire to proselytize and convert the natives of the new word which many believed would civilize them some undertook extremely expensive voyages of discovery but the most common reason was money Spain and Portugal had amassed huge worth trading with their colonies in China and England didn't need much convincing cash crops such as tobacco and sugar were extremely profitable and even more money could be made on the return voyages via the sale of slaves to the new world the Atlantic triangle is his home another reason was security the money from trade as well as large overseas populations loyal to the crown provided extra manpower and money for Wars to support the slave trade England established forts along the coast of Africa from which they operated trading goods for gold ivory and people slaves from Africa were also much easy to obtain them the indentured servants which came from England Ireland or Scotland this was because of the numerous major upheavals across the British Isles such as the English Civil War which saw the British Isles briefly become a republic under Oliver Cromwell the Irish capitalized in a weakened English state and broke away from English rule Cromwell brutally and swiftly put down these rebellions and seized huge chunks of land and gave it to his veterans during the Civil War the colonies generally sided with the monarchy leading the English Commonwealth to blockade some of them Crom will briefly went to war with Spain who ceded Jamaica which would form the backbone of England sugar and slave trades so long story short chromo died in the monarchy was restored under charles ii who in terms of empire managed to gain new amsterdam from the dutch which was swiftly renamed to new york the monarchy would soon find itself in trouble again when Charles's son james a second converted to Catholicism Protestantism was not too pleased about this and so some lords asked the Dutch William of Orange to become King of England which he did in 1688 William's ascendancy to the throne cost a major French supported uprising in Ireland which was eventually quashed Scotland also tried its hand at colonisation during the period why foundling Nova Scotia and modern-day Canada which was quickly lost to the French the most notorious attempt at Scottish Empire building was the founding of the colony at Caledonia and what is now Panama in 1698 which was claimed by Spain the colony failed due to disease in a Spanish blockade and the English refused to help because they didn't want to provoke war what makes Caledonia so notable was the cost of its failure since the venture had cost Scotland almost a fifth of its national wealth and bankrupted the kingdom thus the Scottish in English empires at the turn of the 18th century looked like this in return for England financing Scotland's debts both kingdoms were unified by the 1707 act of Union which gave birth to Great Britain Great Britain immediately found itself caught up in numerous European Wars from the War of the Spanish Succession Britain gained Gibraltar in southern Spain and large swaths of French territory in Canada next came the War of the Austrian succession which wasn't very important to Empire except that it paved the way for a much more important war the Seven Years War the Seven Years War was a global conflict which saw British victory and saw the transfer of a great deal of North American territory to Britain from France and Spain it should be noted here that for many of these countries the wars were nothing more than excuses to seize each other's territories the war also spread to India where the British and French were trying to squeeze each other out the reason for this was the trade with India was incredibly lucrative it focused mainly on textile spices and the most important consumer good of all time T so by the beginning of the Seven Years War the East India Company had already established factories along the coastline of India much of which was controlled by either the Mughal or Maratha empires the company was largely independent and even had its own military the company was also deeply involved in Indian politics and were very good at playing Indian Lords called Nawabs off of each other for British benefit robert clive also known as clive of india led the East India Company forces there the British won a decisive victory against the Indians at the Battle of Plassey he mostly due to some double-dealing after defeating the French the Dutch and later the Mughals British territory in India looked like this Bengal was particularly important since had a taxable population twice the size of Britain after the Wars the company began to levy heavy is against the Localism bengal quickly became an extremely important revenue stream for britain robert clive was for a short period the governor of Bengal and one of his policies was to force local farmers to grow opium for export to China instead of food which meant that whenever crops failed large numbers of Bengali people starved Britain's colonial successes in India were contrasted by its failings in north america the number of soldiers tax disputes and lack of representation in the British Parliament led the 13 colonies to declare their independence the Americans were led by General George Washington who would later become the first President of the United States of America Britain at first was able to win some major victories but after years of attrition alongside the French and Spanish aiding the Americans the British accepted American independence and lost all of this territory the birth of the British Empire was a slow and drawn-out process the reasons for Cloney expansion were diverse ranging from religious calling to the desire for wealth colonial failure led to the creation of Great Britain but colonial success meant the warfare now had a global scope and it became increasingly difficult for the rest of the world to stay uninvolved from European politics I hope you enjoyed this video and thank you for watching

Channel: History Matters

Views: 4,213,550

Keywords: documentary, British Empire, British, Empire, short, India, history, map, anthem, doc, rise, decline, Elizabeth, Tudors, Africa, Canada, USA, United States, American Revolution, George III, Spanish Armada, Seven Years' War, Spanish, Giovanni Caboto, cartoon, explained, Ten Minute History, GCSE, A Level, AP World History, AP Euro, timeline, video, Gibraltar, Jamestown, Roanoke, Robert Clive, short film, facts, rise and fall, british empire documentary bbc, ten minute history

Id: fQktE-YKlJg

Length: 9min 59sec (599 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 26 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Ten_minute_history]

For those wondering, the reason I've made this is to be useful to teachers teaching either A Level or GCSE history since I feel that there isn't enough quick and consumable videos out there for the classroom. Any feedback would be appreciated since I'm new to this.

[u/loudribs]

Hey, this is good stuff. You've clearly done the legwork in terms of research and (I'm assuming you're using AE for the visuals) you've got your head around the basics of animation. The two main things I would try and work on is:

A: Pace. I know the problem you've got - people don't really watch anything that goes over the 10min mark and you've got a lot to cram in BUT at the moment you're in danger of just building a really long list of stuff that's relentless in terms of pace and -dare a say it - just a little monotone. That's a problem because it's like being bludgeoned with facts and it's easy to lose the narrative thread after a minute or two. What you need to do is a) whittle down the content a little and b) vary the pace, dynamics and intonation. By that I mean work some pauses in as well as letting your voice break out of reading and become more conversational.

B: I know first hand how labour intensive animation is and what you've got is good. However, your characters need a little work as they're letting the aesthetic down a little. My advice would be to either think about using Photoshop to cutout characters from original period paintings and then animating them in AE (like I've done in this vid) or rebuilding the characters you already have in Illustrator with the Pen Tool and thickening the strokes right up. Even better, once you've thickened them, use the Width Adjustment Tool to vary the width of their strokes at various points. Trust me, this simple trick will make them look loads better. Oh, and avoid the 'using a a really soft brush for hair and beards' trap. Get confident with the Pen Tool and build it like a cell animation.

Apart from that though I think it's great and something you should be proud of. Keep it up and feel free to DM me if there's anything I've mentioned that you're not sure about.

[u/[deleted]]

Its really good!
Couple of teeny tiny things:

• Spanish War of Succession is worth noting just a touch more because its the reason Britain has Gibraltar.
• I believe New Amsterdam was traded (as opposed to "gained") for one of the Spice Islands off Molucca (as well as maybe other things).
  

Still I guess you're trying to get it under 10 mins. Another weird and probably irrelevant point that I always loved was that the party that clashed on the border that was part of the catalyst for the seven years war contained a certain George Washington within it.

BTW - if you're doing more in the future and consider using voice acting to spice it up then let me know as I can probably give you some fun voices.

[u/Yurilovescats]

Really enjoyed it, but it stops too early! What about Britain's expansion across the Indian subcontinent? What about Africa? The Middle East? Do another one! lol, it was good...

[u/WeightyUnit88]

That was very well done, good work mate.

[u/trivran]

Just a quick point: you need to pronounce the last syllable in Felipe.

[u/Rather_Unfortunate]

I love the sort of golden age for history videos that YouTube is goung through right now. Historia Civilis, ReplyHistory, Epic History TV, The Great War, Extra History, plus a host of smaller channels like BazBattles and now this.

Do keep it up and ensure that you promote them. You've only got 25 subs at the moment, but if you can maintain the quality, you're almost certain to reach 1000 within only a few videos.

[u/JoelTheSuperior]

It's fantastic. Add some stock music / royalty free ukulele (actually maybe not that) though - in a starnge way makes things more enjoyable.

Also stick a compressor on your voice.

[u/[deleted]]

I really enjoyed this, thank you! A little bit of "atmosphere music" might go down well.