document_title: Batman (1966 film)

question_text: who played the joker in the 1966 batman

question_tokens: who played the joker in the 1966 batman

text: Batman (1966 film)

text: Plot[edit]

text: When Batman and Robin get a tip that Commodore Schmidlapp is in danger aboard his yacht, they launch a rescue mission using the Batcopter. As Batman descends on the bat-ladder to land on the yacht, it suddenly vanishes beneath him. He rises out of the sea with a shark attacking his leg. After Batman dislodges it with bat-shark repellent, the shark explodes. Batman and Robin head back to Commissioner Gordon's office, where they deduce that the tip was a set-up by the United Underworld, a gathering of four of the most powerful villains in Gotham City (The Joker, The Penguin, The Riddler, and The Catwoman).

text: The United Underworld equip themselves with a dehydrator that can turn humans into dust (an invention of Schmidlapp, who is unaware he has been kidnapped), a submarine made to resemble a penguin, and their three pirate henchmen (Bluebeard, Morgan and Quetch). It is revealed the yacht was really a projection. When Batman and Robin return to a buoy concealing a projector, they are trapped on the buoy by a magnet and targeted by torpedoes. They use a radio-detonator to destroy two of the missiles, and a porpoise sacrifices itself to intercept the last one. The Catwoman, disguised as Soviet journalist "Miss Kitka", helps the group kidnap Bruce Wayne and pretends to be kidnapped with him, as part of a plot to lure Batman and finish him off with another of the Penguin's explosive animals (not knowing that Bruce Wayne is Batman's alter-ego). After Bruce Wayne escapes captivity, the Penguin disguises himself as the Commodore and schemes his way into the Batcave along with five dehydrated henchmen. This plan fails when the henchmen unexpectedly disappear into antimatter once struck: The Penguin mistakenly rehydrated them with heavy water, used to recharge the Batcave's atomic pile.

text: Ultimately, Batman and Robin are unable to prevent the kidnapping of the dehydrated United World Organization's Security Council. Giving chase in the batboat to retrieve them (and Miss Kitka, presumed by the duo as still captive), Robin uses a sonic charge weapon to disable Penguin's submarine and force it to surface, where a fist fight ensues. Although Batman and Robin win the fight, Batman is heartbroken to find out that his "true love" Miss Kitka is actually the Catwoman when her mask falls off. Commodore Schmidlapp accidentally breaks the vials containing the powdered Council members, mixing them together.

text: Batman sets to work, constructing an elaborate filter to separate the mingled dust. Robin asks him whether it might be in the world's best interests for them to alter the dust samples, so that humans can no longer harm one another. In response, Batman says that they cannot do so, reminding Robin of the fate of the Penguin's henchmen and their tainted rehydration, and can only hope for people in general to learn to live together peacefully on their own.

text: With the world watching, the Security Council is re-hydrated. All of the members are restored alive and well, continuing to squabble among themselves and totally oblivious of their surroundings, but each of them now speaks the language and displays the stereotypical mannerisms of a nation other than their own. Batman quietly expresses his sincere hope to Robin that this "mixing of minds" does more good than it does harm. The duo quietly leave United World Headquarters by climbing out of the window.

text: Cast[edit]

text:
Adam West as Bruce Wayne / Batman
Burt Ward as Dick Grayson / Robin
Lee Meriwether as The Catwoman (Kitka)
Cesar Romero as The Joker
Burgess Meredith as The Penguin
Frank Gorshin as The Riddler
Alan Napier as Alfred Pennyworth
Neil Hamilton as Commissioner James Gordon
Stafford Repp as Chief Miles O'Hara
Madge Blake as Aunt Harriet Cooper
Reginald Denny as Commodore Schmidlapp
Milton Frome as Vice Admiral Fangschleister
Gil Perkins as Bluebeard
Dick Crockett as Morgan
George Sawaya as Quetch
Van Williams (uncredited voice) as President Lyndon B. Johnson[4]

text: The film includes most members of the original TV cast: the actors for Batman, Robin, Alfred, Gordon, O'Hara, Aunt Harriet, the Joker, the Penguin, and the Riddler all reprised their roles. Though Julie Newmar had at this point played Catwoman in two episodes of season one in the TV series, she had other commitments at that time[5] and was replaced by Lee Meriwether in the film. According to the Biography special Catwoman: Her Many Lives, aired on July 20, 2004, it was stated that Newmar was unable to reprise her role due to a reported back injury. Catwoman was nonetheless played by Newmar once again in the following eleven episodes of season two of the series; Eartha Kitt would then play Catwoman in three episodes of season three.

text: In his autobiography, Adam West writes of his asking for more money to do the film and that the producers countered with the fact that another actor would be hired. Batman was Denny's final film appearance. Jack LaLanne has a cameo as a man on a rooftop with bikini-clad women.[6]

text: Production[edit]

text: William Dozier wanted to make a big-screen film to generate interest in his proposed Batman TV series by having the feature in theaters while the first season of the series was rolling before the cameras. The studio, 20th Century Fox, refused because it would have to cover the entire cost of a movie, while it would only have to share the cost of a TV series (a much less risky proposition).[7]

text: The film features many characters from the show. It was written by series writer Lorenzo Semple, Jr. and directed by Leslie H. Martinson.[8] Martinson had directed a pair of the television series season one episodes: "The Penguin Goes Straight" and "Not Yet, He Ain't".

text: Tone[edit]

text: Even though it is often described (like many contemporary shows) as a parody of a popular comic-book character, some commentators believe that its comedy is not so tightly confined. They felt the film's depiction of the Caped Crusader "captured the feel of the contemporary comics perfectly".[9] The film was, they remind us, made at a time when "the Batman of the Golden Age comics was already essentially neutered."[10]

text: Certain elements verge into direct parody of the history of Batman. The movie, like the TV series, is strongly influenced by the comparatively obscure 1940s serials of Batman, such as the escapes done almost out of luck.[10] The penchant for giving devices a "Bat-" prefix and the dramatic use of stylized title cards during fight scenes acknowledge some of the conventions that the character had accumulated in various media. However, the majority of Batman's campier moments can be read as a broader parody on contemporary mid-1960s culture in general.[11]

text: Furthermore, the movie represented Batman's first major foray into Cold War issues paying heavy attention to Polaris Missiles, war surplus submarines and taking a poke at the Pentagon. The inclusion of a glory-hunting presidential character and the unfavorable portrayal of Security Council Members marked Batman's first attempts to poke fun at domestic and international politics.[12]

text: Vehicles[edit]

text: Besides the Batmobile, other vehicles used by The Dynamic Duo include:

text:
Batcycle with side car
Batboat, provided by Glastron
Batcopter

text: Of the three new Batvehicles which first appeared in the Batman film, only the Batcycle properly crossed over into the TV series as the budgetary limits of the TV series precluded the full use of the others. While the Batcopter and Batboat from the movie appeared briefly in episodes (including a use of the Batboat in the conclusion of the first post-film two-parter: "Walk the Straight and Narrow"), they primarily did so in the form of stock-footage scenes from the film intercut into the series.

text: Soundtrack[edit]

text: Nelson Riddle's original score to Batman the Movie was released in 2010 by La-La Land Records and Fox Music. The album contains the entire score as heard in the film in chronological order as well as an unreleased cue. This limited edition includes a lavishly illustrated color booklet which features exclusive liner notes by Brian Baterwhite. This Limited Edition was of 2000 units.

text: It was newly re-issued in 2016. While the program and master of this release is identical to the 2010 release, this reissue features all-new exclusive liner notes by John Takis and art design by Jim Titus. This new Limited Edition is of 2500 units.

text: Track listing

text:
Acknowledgment/Main Title 2:31
Batmobile To Airport 2:01
A Good Job 2:22
Roger Wilco (2:45)
Just Ring/Yo Ho, Sir/Let’s Find Out 2:21
Tricky Buoy 3:24
Torpedoes 2:35
Holy Polaris 1:01
Kitka 1:13
Dark Eyes (Source) 0:21
Plaisir D’amour (Source) 1:25
Bruce And Kitka* 0:44
Shades Of Smolensic 3:20
Jet Umbrellas 1:50
Filthy Criminals 1:34
Chamber 17 1:14
Credulous Creatures/Fine Finkish Friends 2:19
Dehydrated 1:36
Stand Clear 2:10
Flee For Your Life 2:38
False Feathers/Swallow This Pill 3:19
My Very Paradise 2:06
The Grotto/A Stitch In Time 3:09
Emergency Operation 2:55
Small Craft 3:30
Attack (3:23)
Take It In Tow 0:56
Vials 4:23
End Title 1:10

text: Bonus Tracks

text:
“Again” 2:05
Submarine Battle (Edited Music)* 4:37
Batman Theme 0:46

text: Previously Unreleased

text: Total Time: 72:13

text: Release[edit]

text: Batman premiered at the Paramount Theatre in Austin, Texas on July 30, 1966 (between the first and second seasons of the TV series); it was moderately successful at the box office. The Batboat featured in the film was created by Austin-based company Glastron, whose payment was in having the film premiere in their hometown. In conjunction with the premiere, Jean Boone of Austin CBS affiliate station KTBC interviewed the film's cast, including Lee Meriwether, Cesar Romero, and Adam West.[13]

text: ABC, the network which previously aired the Batman television series, first broadcast the film on the July 4, 1971 edition of The ABC Sunday Night Movie; the film was quickly rebroadcast on ABC September 4 of that year. The film debuted on home video via formats VHS and Betamax release in 1985 by Playhouse Video, in 1989 by CBS/Fox Video, and in 1994 by Fox Video. The film was released on DVD in 2001, and re-released July 1, 2008 on DVD and on Blu-ray.[14]

text: Reception[edit]

text: The film has received generally positive reviews over the years. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an 80% rating based on 30 reviews, with an average rating of 6.2/10. The site's consensus states: "Batman: The Movie elevates camp to an art form -- and has a blast doing it, every gloriously tongue-in-cheek inch of the way."[15] Bill Gibron of Filmcritic.com gave the film 3 out of 5 stars: "Unlike other attempts at bringing these characters to life...the TV cast really captures the inherent insanity of the roles."[16] Variety magazine stated on their review that "the intense innocent enthusiasm of Cesar Romero, Burgess Meredith and Frank Gorshin as the three criminals is balanced against the innocent calm of Adam West and Burt Ward, Batman and Robin respectively."[17]


document_title: Geographic center of the contiguous United States

question_text: what city is in the center of the us

question_tokens: what city is in the center of the us

root

text: Overview[edit]

text: Its position as located in a 1918 survey is located at 39°50′N 98°35′W / 39.833°N 98.583°W / 39.833; -98.583 (Geographic Center of the Contiguous United States), in Kansas about 2.6 miles (4.2 km) northwest of the center of Lebanon, approximately 12 miles (19 km) south of the Kansas-Nebraska border.[1]

tag: p

text: While any measurement of the exact center of a land mass will always be imprecise due to changing shorelines and other factors, the NGS coordinates are recognized in a historical marker in a small park at the intersection of AA Road and K-191. It is accessible by a turn-off from U.S. Route 281.

text: It is distinct from the geographic center of the United States, which reflects the 1959 additions of the states of Alaska and Hawaii, which is located at a point northeast of Belle Fourche, South Dakota.

text: In an unusual technical glitch, a farmstead northeast of Potwin, Kansas became the default site of 600 million IP addresses (due to their lack of fine granularity) when the Massachusetts-based digital mapping company MaxMind changed the putative geographic center of the contiguous United States from 39.8333333,-98.585522 to 38.0000,-97.0000.[2]

text: Marker[edit]

text: In order to protect the privacy of the private land owner where the point identified by the 1918 survey falls,[3] a proxy marker was erected in 1940 some half a mile away.[4]

text: Its inscription reads:

text:
The GEOGRAPHIC CENTER of the UNITED STATES
LAT. 39°50' LONG. -98°35'
NE 1/4 - SE 1/4 - S32 - T2S - R11W
Located by L.T. Hagadorn of Paulette & Wilson - Engineers and L.A. Beardslee - County Engineer. From data furnished by U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.
Sponsored by Lebanon Hub Club. Lebanon, Kansas. April 25, 1940

text: An American flag usually flies atop a pole placed on the monument. A covered picnic area and small four-pew chapel are nearby.

text: Method of measurement[edit]

text: In 1918, the Coast and Geodetic Survey found this location by balancing on a point a cardboard cutout shaped like the U.S.[5] Incredibly, this method was accurate to within 20 miles, but while the Geodetic Survey no longer endorses any location as the center of the U.S., the identification of Lebanon, Kansas has remained.[6][7]


document_title: Batroc the Leaper

question_text: who does captain america fight on the ship

text: Batroc the Leaper

text: Publication history[edit]

text: This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (March 2013)

tag: table

text: Batroc, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, first appeared in Tales of Suspense #75 in March 1966. He has reappeared in various Marvel titles ever since.[3]

text: Sporting a new costume designed by John Romita, Jr., Batroc served as Klaw's top lieutenant in the first arc of the 2005 re-launch of Reginald Hudlin's Black Panther.[4]

text: Fictional character biography[edit]

text: Georges Batroc was born in Marseille, France, and served in the French Foreign Legion. He is a French costumed mercenary who specializes in savate (also known as "La Boxe Française"), a form of kickboxing, with acrobatic skills and articulate unusual flexibility. Although he has primarily appeared in the pages of Captain America, he has also faced off against the Punisher, Spider-Man, Deadpool, Hawkeye, Iron Fist and Gambit. Batroc has occasionally led his own team "Batroc's Brigade" although membership has changed over time. The group has primarily fought Captain America.

text: In the character's first appearance, he was hired by Them to steal the Inferno-42 cylinder. He first battled Captain America during this mission. When Batroc introduced himself with typical bluster, Cap revealed, to Batroc's delight, that he had already heard of the mercenary: "Batroc the Leaper, eh? A master of la savate, the French art of boxing with the feet!"[5] Later, he was again hired by Hydra and abducted Sharon Carter for them. He lured Captain America into a rematch, in which he insisted Hydra not intervene, and again lost; however, when Hydra agents prepared to kill both Cap and himself, Batroc, incensed at such "men wizout honair," switched sides to help Cap against Hydra.[6] In both of these stories, Batroc was regarded as a deadly combatant, his skill respected by enemies and employers alike.

text: Batroc was then hired by a foreign power to locate a "seismo-bomb" with the first known Batroc's Brigade (consisting of the original Swordsman and the Living Laser). Batroc battled Captain America again.[7] The Machinesmith's Baron Strucker android known as "the Hood" then hired a new Batroc's Brigade (consisting of Porcupine and Whirlwind) to battle Captain America.[8]

text: Batroc then formed a third Batroc's Brigade, which consisted of various unnamed henchmen rather than known supervillains since supervillains had failed Batroc in the past. The alien Jakar, concealing his true nature and intent, hired this group to abduct children from New York and to battle Captain America and Falcon. Although Batroc felt no compunction about abducting children, upon learning Jakar's true nature and his intent to use the children's souls to revive his comatose race, he felt his "sense of honair" had been violated by the deception, and he again switched sides, aiding Captain America and the Falcon to rescue the children.[9] Ward Meachum then hired Batroc's Brigade, who battled Iron Fist and a ninja warrior, several Brigade members dying in the process.[10]

text: For a while after that, Batroc operated without a Brigade. Alongside an extra-dimensional demon ally, Batroc attempted a theft of transuranium, but was stopped by Captain America and Spider-Man.[11] Batroc was also a member of the ersatz "Defenders", a group of villains who were impersonating the actual Defenders. They committed robberies while posing as members of the Defenders, until stopped by a Defenders contingent.[12] Alongside Mister Hyde, Batroc attempted an extortion scheme against Manhattan. He battled Captain America, but when Mister Hyde decided to carry out the threat, which would kill thousands, Batroc, again showing that there were some lines he would not cross, aided Captain America against Hyde, saving the city.[13]

text: Batroc then formed a new, longer-lasting lineup of Batroc's Brigade - this one consisting of Zaran the Weapons Master and Machete. This team was first seen when Obadiah Stane contracted them to steal Captain America's shield and Batroc finally succeeded.[14] Trick Shot then hired Batroc's Brigade to battle Hawkeye.[15] Baron Helmut Zemo then hired Batroc's Brigade to acquire the fragments of the Bloodstone. They battled Captain America and Diamondback.[16] The brigade was later hired by Maelstrom to help him build a device that could destroy the universe and battled the Great Lakes Avengers.[17] Alongside Snakebite, Batroc also battled the Punisher.[18]

text: Later, Batroc the Leaper showed up as member of a small army of villains organized by Klaw to invade Wakanda, which included Rhino, Radioactive Man, the Cannibal, and the villainous Black Knight. He was defeated by Black Panther's royal bodyguards.[19]

text: During the crossover JLA/Avengers, Batroc briefly confronted Batman when he was one of the villains recruited by Krona for his army. The Dark Knight defeated him (off-panel). Batroc's Brigade then face Batman, but he is assisted by Black Panther, Huntress and Black Widow, in defeating the Brigade.[20]

text: Batroc has a daughter who is teamed in villainy with the daughter of similar B-list supervillain Tarantula. Both daughters take their fathers' respective costumes and titles. Taskmaster expresses his shock that Tarantula and Batroc are heterosexual before soundly beating the two villains' offspring, tossing them effortlessly off of a building, noting that he also "hates ethnic stereotypes."[21]

text: Batroc briefly served among the group of villains forcibly drafted into Baron Zemo's Thunderbolts army. But after returning to federal custody, Batroc registered with the Superhuman Registration Act,[22] and was sent to a superhuman training facility located at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia to train recruits in martial arts[23] before being transferred over to Camp Hammond.[24]

text: Ultimately, however, Batroc found government work unsatisfactory and returned to his mercenary life, confronting the new Captain America while on a job to steal an item from the United Nations.[25] Also, he was working with The Man with No Face, a mysterious being from Captain America's past.[26] It is soon revealed that Batroc was stealing the original Human Torch's remains for reverse engineering.[27]

text: Batroc and a handful of other super individuals were corralled into working for M.O.D.O.K. against their wishes.[volume & issue needed] He was fine with it figuring on earning some money until MODOK killed him. There he met Gwen Poole AKA Gwenpool who killed their team's assassin and took credit for his kills, earning her an unwanted place on the team.[volume & issue needed] Finding out that she has no powers and only killed the assassin through luck he was going to turn her in until she convinced him that she really might be from another universe and know useful information.[volume & issue needed] He then decided to make her less of a liability by teaching her actual combat moves and the use of weapons. She subsequently defeated MODOK when he found out her secret and took over the team briefly. After a fight with some aliens in which they did not get paid the group broke up.[volume & issue needed]

text: During the Secret Empire storyline, Batroc the Leaper appears as a member of the Army of Evil. He alongside Living Laser and Whirlwind attack a haggard, bearded man in torn World War II army uniform who identifies himself as Steve Rogers. He is assisted by people that appear to be Sam Wilson and a Bucky Barnes with both his arms.[28]

text: Powers and abilities[edit]

text: Batroc the Leaper has no superhuman abilities, but is in peak physical condition in every respect. He is an Olympic-level weightlifter and has extraordinary agility and reflexes. His leg muscles are particularly well developed, enabling him to leap great distances equal to an Olympic athlete. He is an expert martial artist and hand-to-hand combatant who specializes in Savate (French-style kickboxing), although he is also adept at other martial arts such as Krav Maga.[29] He is also skilled in Parkour.[29] He is also a skilled military tactician, having formerly been in the French Foreign Legion.

text: Batroc is also an experienced thief and smuggler, and can speak both French and English. Although, as a mercenary, he does not hesitate to perform any number of criminal acts for his clients, Batroc has a strong sense of honor; he will turn against any client who he feels has unfairly deceived him into committing crimes to which he might not otherwise have agreed.

text: Other versions[edit]

text: The Ultimate Marvel incarnation of Batroc the Leaper is a French jewelry thief. This version's martial arts skills are also present. When he and his thugs were robbing a jewelry store, they're stopped by the new Spider-Man's "venom strike".[30]

text: In the MC2 continuity, Batroc the Leaper still operates his own criminal syndicate, until stopped by American Dream.[31]

text: A zombiefied version of Batroc the Leaper appears in the third installment of the Marvel Zombies series, where he is killed by Carl Creel's trademark concrete ball and chain.[32]

text: In the alternate continuity of the 2005 "House of M" storyline, Batroc the Leaper is a member of the Hood's extensive-criminal empire.[33] He participated in the takeover of Santo Rico and stayed to fight when the Red Guard came, to protect the sapiens population. He was the first of them to die, attacked by Agent Toad and terminated by two S.H.I.E.L.D.'s soldiers.[34]

text: In other media[edit]

text: Television[edit]

text:
Batroc the Leaper appears in the Captain America segment of The Marvel Super Heroes, voiced by Gillie Fenwick.
Batroc the Leaper appears in The Super Hero Squad Show episode "Stranger From a Savage Land", voiced by A. J. Buckley.[35] He assists Sabretooth, Thunderball, and Toad into stealing Zabu from the Super Hero City Zoo.
Batroc the Leaper appears in Black Panther, voiced by JB Blanc. He is among the supervillains recruited by Klaw to invade Wakanda.
Batroc the Leaper makes a brief appearance in the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes episode "The Big House". He appears as one of the many villains incarcerated in one of the four prisons as Mad Thinker explains to fellow prisoner Whirlwind.
Batroc the Leaper appears in Ultimate Spider-Man, voiced by Rob Paulsen in a French accent.[36] In this series, his moniker "the Leaper" stems from a pair of exoskeletal leg bracers which enhance his kicking and leaping power. He is also capable of scaling up vertical walls, providing that they have footholds for him to brace his feet against.[37] In the fourth season, Hydra upgrades him with a full-body exoskeleton formed from pure energy.[38]

tag: ul

text: Film[edit]

text: Batroc the Leaper appears in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, portrayed by French Canadian former UFC Welterweight Champion Georges St-Pierre.[39] He appears as an Algerian mercenary who is holding a S.H.I.E.L.D. ship hostage. Captain America, Black Widow and a group of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents rescue the hostages. Batroc then has a fight with Captain America but is eventually defeated, and later escapes. He is captured by Alexander Goodwin Pierce and brought in for questioning, but is seen to remain silent during interrogation. Nick Fury later reveals he hired Batroc to hijack the ship to give him an excuse to send Black Widow on board so she could steal confidential S.H.I.E.L.D. files pointing to a Hydra conspiracy that involved Hydra infiltrators within S.H.I.E.L.D.

text: Video games[edit]

text:
Batroc the Leaper appears as a mini-boss in Spider-Man and Captain America in Doctor Doom's Revenge.[citation needed]
Batroc the Leaper appears in Marvel: Avengers Alliance.[40] Batroc can be confronted in Wakanda, should the player choose to take on the White Gorilla terrorists under Dell Rusk's advice.
Batroc the Leaper appears in Marvel Heroes.[citation needed] The player can go to Industry City and find him in one of the events that take place there.

text: Toys[edit]

text: A six-inch Batroc action figure was released as part of Hasbro's Marvel Legends toy line in 2015.


document_title: The Simpsons: Tapped Out

question_text: how many levels are there in the simpsons tapped out

text: The Simpsons: Tapped Out

text: Story[edit]

text: Too busy playing an elf-related game on his myPad (parody of iPad) at work, Homer neglects his workstation and accidentally causes a meltdown at the nuclear power plant, leading to a complete destruction of Springfield. Left stranded, he is solely responsible for rebuilding Springfield and bringing back its town members. Homer is desperate to find other characters so that he can get them to rebuild and he can get back to his elf game. With the help of Lisa, Homer rebuilds Springfield and brings back key sought out characters.

text: Gameplay[edit]

text: This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text: The game may be considered a city-building game. It offers a variety of buildings (houses, shops, public buildings from the animation series) that the player buys with "Money ($)" in-game currency. Premium items are bought with donuts which can also be purchased with real-world cash. This references Homer Simpson's passion for donuts within the series. The player uses building and character quest-lines to make in-game progress. By completing quests and levels, the player collects more characters and buildings unlocking further quests and levels. Each building regularly generates in-game money to collect, under names such as "Income tax" from houses and the "Collection plate" from the First Church of Springfield. Players can place rivers, roads, pavement and decorations on the land. In 2013, developers added the "Krustyland" transporter, to get players from Springfield to the infamous Krustyland, where they can expand and build like the main Springfield game.

text: The game is supported by EA's Origin, which acts as a social bridge to where players log into their Origin accounts and visit friends' towns to collect cash once every 24 hours; and occasionally other tasks during an event.

text: There is a hidden easter egg where, in order to obtain the statue of Jebediah Springfield decoration, the player must tap Homer 10 times in a row whilst he is performing any task. This action also gives the player 10 free donuts, but can only work once.

text: Since the May 18, 2016 update, the maximum number of levels is currently 939, because this is the Simpsons' area code in Springfield.

text: Frequent content updates have been released for the game, with new game content or time-limited events related to episode promotions or holidays. Major events include a temporary currency, which can be used to buy – or win – limited edition prizes.[5] For some events every user's winnings contributed to a community fund, which includes prizes for certain levels of the event currency.[6]

text: Development[edit]

text: According to game runner and longtime Simpsons writer J. Stewart Burns, the game originally started as a "labor of love" and he didn't expect much to happen after the game's release.[7] Although they do not get credited, there are about ten writers who currently work on the game, including Simpsons writers Burns, Matt Selman, Brian Kelley, Jeff Westbrook, Jon Kern, Carolyn Omine and Diana Wright.[7]

text: In-game problems[edit]

text: Shortly after the iOS launch, the game was pulled from the iOS App Store due to EA's servers being unable to cope with the demand and a plethora of serious glitches reported by users.[8] After a month had passed, EA set up a forum whereby users could report bug issues, but failed to offer solutions to issues or temporary updates. Some users who had made in-app purchases discovered that their purchases had vanished. After contacting EA, users were able to collect refunds directly from Apple. Several months later on August 16, 2012,[9] the app returned to the App Store. Since 2016 there has been a bug that removes most functionality from the game interface. Players are calling this the "rollback bug" since the only way to fix your game is to have EA support roll your game back to a previous date before you acquired the bug. As of April 2018 there is still no fix for this bug and it continues to grow affecting almost 20% of all players.

text: Criticism[edit]

text: Due to criticism of the larger trend of freemium games' revenue structure, the game was satirized in the South Park episode "Freemium Isn't Free" as exploitative and lacking in gameplay.[10] The game itself earlier lampooned this point during an in-game conversation between two characters.[11]


document_title: British Empire

question_text: where did british empire control an entire continent

question_tokens: where did british empire control an entire continent

text: British Empire

text: Origins (1497–1583)

text: The foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, commissioned John Cabot to lead a voyage to discover a route to Asia via the North Atlantic.[7] Cabot sailed in 1497, five years after the European discovery of America, but he made landfall on the coast of Newfoundland, and, mistakenly believing (like Christopher Columbus) that he had reached Asia,[21] there was no attempt to found a colony. Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but nothing was ever heard of his ships again.[22]

text: No further attempts to establish English colonies in the Americas were made until well into the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, during the last decades of the 16th century.[23] In the meantime, the 1533 Statute in Restraint of Appeals had declared "that this realm of England is an Empire".[24] The subsequent Protestant Reformation turned England and Catholic Spain into implacable enemies.[7] In 1562, the English Crown encouraged the privateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake to engage in slave-raiding attacks against Spanish and Portuguese ships off the coast of West Africa[25] with the aim of breaking into the Atlantic slave trade. This effort was rebuffed and later, as the Anglo-Spanish Wars intensified, Elizabeth I gave her blessing to further privateering raids against Spanish ports in the Americas and shipping that was returning across the Atlantic, laden with treasure from the New World.[26] At the same time, influential writers such as Richard Hakluyt and John Dee (who was the first to use the term "British Empire")[27] were beginning to press for the establishment of England's own empire. By this time, Spain had become the dominant power in the Americas and was exploring the Pacific Ocean, Portugal had established trading posts and forts from the coasts of Africa and Brazil to China, and France had begun to settle the Saint Lawrence River area, later to become New France.[28]

text: Plantations of Ireland

text: Although England trailed behind other European powers in establishing overseas colonies, it had been engaged during the 16th century in the settlement of Ireland with Protestants from England and Scotland, drawing on precedents dating back to the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1169.[29][30] Several people who helped establish the Plantations of Ireland also played a part in the early colonisation of North America, particularly a group known as the West Country men.[31]

text: "First" British Empire (1583–1783)

text: In 1578, Elizabeth I granted a patent to Humphrey Gilbert for discovery and overseas exploration.[32] That year, Gilbert sailed for the Caribbean with the intention of engaging in piracy and establishing a colony in North America, but the expedition was aborted before it had crossed the Atlantic.[33][34] In 1583, he embarked on a second attempt, on this occasion to the island of Newfoundland whose harbour he formally claimed for England, although no settlers were left behind. Gilbert did not survive the return journey to England, and was succeeded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, who was granted his own patent by Elizabeth in 1584. Later that year, Raleigh founded the Roanoke Colony on the coast of present-day North Carolina, but lack of supplies caused the colony to fail.[35]

text: In 1603, James VI, King of Scots, ascended (as James I) to the English throne and in 1604 negotiated the Treaty of London, ending hostilities with Spain. Now at peace with its main rival, English attention shifted from preying on other nations' colonial infrastructures to the business of establishing its own overseas colonies.[36] The British Empire began to take shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of North America and the smaller islands of the Caribbean, and the establishment of joint-stock companies, most notably the East India Company, to administer colonies and overseas trade. This period, until the loss of the Thirteen Colonies after the American War of Independence towards the end of the 18th century, has subsequently been referred to by some historians as the "First British Empire".[37]

text: Americas, Africa and the slave trade

text: The Caribbean initially provided England's most important and lucrative colonies,[38] but not before several attempts at colonisation failed. An attempt to establish a colony in Guiana in 1604 lasted only two years, and failed in its main objective to find gold deposits.[39] Colonies in St Lucia (1605) and Grenada (1609) also rapidly folded, but settlements were successfully established in St. Kitts (1624), Barbados (1627) and Nevis (1628).[40] The colonies soon adopted the system of sugar plantations successfully used by the Portuguese in Brazil, which depended on slave labour, and—at first—Dutch ships, to sell the slaves and buy the sugar.[41] To ensure that the increasingly healthy profits of this trade remained in English hands, Parliament decreed in 1651 that only English ships would be able to ply their trade in English colonies. This led to hostilities with the United Dutch Provinces—a series of Anglo-Dutch Wars—which would eventually strengthen England's position in the Americas at the expense of the Dutch.[42] In 1655, England annexed the island of Jamaica from the Spanish, and in 1666 succeeded in colonising the Bahamas.[43]

text: England's first permanent settlement in the Americas was founded in 1607 in Jamestown, led by Captain John Smith and managed by the Virginia Company. Bermuda was settled and claimed by England as a result of the 1609 shipwreck of the Virginia Company's flagship, and in 1615 was turned over to the newly formed Somers Isles Company.[44] The Virginia Company's charter was revoked in 1624 and direct control of Virginia was assumed by the crown, thereby founding the Colony of Virginia.[45] The London and Bristol Company was created in 1610 with the aim of creating a permanent settlement on Newfoundland, but was largely unsuccessful.[46] In 1620, Plymouth was founded as a haven for Puritan religious separatists, later known as the Pilgrims.[47] Fleeing from religious persecution would become the motive of many English would-be colonists to risk the arduous trans-Atlantic voyage: Maryland was founded as a haven for Roman Catholics (1634), Rhode Island (1636) as a colony tolerant of all religions and Connecticut (1639) for Congregationalists. The Province of Carolina was founded in 1663. With the surrender of Fort Amsterdam in 1664, England gained control of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, renaming it New York. This was formalised in negotiations following the Second Anglo-Dutch War, in exchange for Suriname.[48] In 1681, the colony of Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn. The American colonies were less financially successful than those of the Caribbean, but had large areas of good agricultural land and attracted far larger numbers of English emigrants who preferred their temperate climates.[49]

text: In 1670, Charles II incorporated by royal charter the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), granting it a monopoly on the fur trade in the area known as Rupert's Land, which would later form a large proportion of the Dominion of Canada. Forts and trading posts established by the HBC were frequently the subject of attacks by the French, who had established their own fur trading colony in adjacent New France.[50]

text: Two years later, the Royal African Company was inaugurated, receiving from King Charles a monopoly of the trade to supply slaves to the British colonies of the Caribbean.[51] From the outset, slavery was the basis of the British Empire in the West Indies. Until the abolition of its slave trade in 1807, Britain was responsible for the transportation of 3.5 million African slaves to the Americas, a third of all slaves transported across the Atlantic.[52] To facilitate this trade, forts were established on the coast of West Africa, such as James Island, Accra and Bunce Island. In the British Caribbean, the percentage of the population of African descent rose from 25% in 1650 to around 80% in 1780, and in the Thirteen Colonies from 10% to 40% over the same period (the majority in the southern colonies).[53] For the slave traders, the trade was extremely profitable, and became a major economic mainstay for such western British cities as Bristol and Liverpool, which formed the third corner of the triangular trade with Africa and the Americas. For the transported, harsh and unhygienic conditions on the slaving ships and poor diets meant that the average mortality rate during the Middle Passage was one in seven.[54]

text: In 1695, the Parliament of Scotland granted a charter to the Company of Scotland, which established a settlement in 1698 on the Isthmus of Panama. Besieged by neighbouring Spanish colonists of New Granada, and afflicted by malaria, the colony was abandoned two years later. The Darien scheme was a financial disaster for Scotland — a quarter of Scottish capital[55] was lost in the enterprise — and ended Scottish hopes of establishing its own overseas empire. The episode also had major political consequences, persuading the governments of both England and Scotland of the merits of a union of countries, rather than just crowns.[56] This occurred in 1707 with the Treaty of Union, establishing the Kingdom of Great Britain.

text: Rivalry with the Netherlands in Asia

text: At the end of the 16th century, England and the Netherlands began to challenge Portugal's monopoly of trade with Asia, forming private joint-stock companies to finance the voyages—the English, later British, East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1600 and 1602 respectively. The primary aim of these companies was to tap into the lucrative spice trade, an effort focused mainly on two regions; the East Indies archipelago, and an important hub in the trade network, India. There, they competed for trade supremacy with Portugal and with each other.[57] Although England ultimately eclipsed the Netherlands as a colonial power, in the short term the Netherlands' more advanced financial system[58] and the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the 17th century left it with a stronger position in Asia. Hostilities ceased after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the Dutch William of Orange ascended the English throne, bringing peace between the Netherlands and England. A deal between the two nations left the spice trade of the East Indies archipelago to the Netherlands and the textiles industry of India to England, but textiles soon overtook spices in terms of profitability, and by 1720, in terms of sales, the British company had overtaken the Dutch.[58]

text: Global conflicts with France

text: Peace between England and the Netherlands in 1688 meant that the two countries entered the Nine Years' War as allies, but the conflict—waged in Europe and overseas between France, Spain and the Anglo-Dutch alliance—left the English a stronger colonial power than the Dutch, who were forced to devote a larger proportion of their military budget on the costly land war in Europe.[59] The 18th century saw England (after 1707, Britain) rise to be the world's dominant colonial power, and France becoming its main rival on the imperial stage.[60]

text: The death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and his bequeathal of Spain and its colonial empire to Philippe of Anjou, a grandson of the King of France, raised the prospect of the unification of France, Spain and their respective colonies, an unacceptable state of affairs for England and the other powers of Europe.[61] In 1701, England, Portugal and the Netherlands sided with the Holy Roman Empire against Spain and France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted until 1714.

text: At the concluding Treaty of Utrecht, Philip renounced his and his descendants' right to the French throne and Spain lost its empire in Europe.[61] The British Empire was territorially enlarged: from France, Britain gained Newfoundland and Acadia, and from Spain, Gibraltar and Menorca. Gibraltar became a critical naval base and allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean. Spain also ceded the rights to the lucrative asiento (permission to sell slaves in Spanish America) to Britain.[62]

text: During the middle decades of the 18th century, there were several outbreaks of military conflict on the Indian subcontinent, the Carnatic Wars, as the English East India Company (often known simply as "the Company") and its French counterpart, the French East India Company (Compagnie française des Indes orientales), struggled alongside local rulers to fill the vacuum that had been left by the decline of the Mughal Empire. The Battle of Plassey in 1757, in which the British, led by Robert Clive, defeated the Nawab of Bengal and his French allies, left the British East India Company in control of Bengal and as the major military and political power in India.[63] France was left control of its enclaves but with military restrictions and an obligation to support British client states, ending French hopes of controlling India.[64] In the following decades the British East India Company gradually increased the size of the territories under its control, either ruling directly or via local rulers under the threat of force from the British Indian Army, the vast majority of which was composed of Indian sepoys.[65]

text: The British and French struggles in India became but one theatre of the global Seven Years' War (1756–1763) involving France, Britain and the other major European powers. The signing of the Treaty of Paris (1763) had important consequences for the future of the British Empire. In North America, France's future as a colonial power effectively ended with the recognition of British claims to Rupert's Land,[50] and the ceding of New France to Britain (leaving a sizeable French-speaking population under British control) and Louisiana to Spain. Spain ceded Florida to Britain. Along with its victory over France in India, the Seven Years' War therefore left Britain as the world's most powerful maritime power.[66]

text: Loss of the Thirteen American Colonies

text: During the 1760s and early 1770s, relations between the Thirteen Colonies and Britain became increasingly strained, primarily because of resentment of the British Parliament's attempts to govern and tax American colonists without their consent.[67] This was summarised at the time by the slogan "No taxation without representation", a perceived violation of the guaranteed Rights of Englishmen. The American Revolution began with rejection of Parliamentary authority and moves towards self-government. In response, Britain sent troops to reimpose direct rule, leading to the outbreak of war in 1775. The following year, in 1776, the United States declared independence. The entry of France into the war in 1778 tipped the military balance in the Americans' favour and after a decisive defeat at Yorktown in 1781, Britain began negotiating peace terms. American independence was acknowledged at the Peace of Paris in 1783.[68]

text: The loss of such a large portion of British America, at the time Britain's most populous overseas possession, is seen by some historians as the event defining the transition between the "first" and "second" empires,[69] in which Britain shifted its attention away from the Americas to Asia, the Pacific and later Africa. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, had argued that colonies were redundant, and that free trade should replace the old mercantilist policies that had characterised the first period of colonial expansion, dating back to the protectionism of Spain and Portugal.[66][70] The growth of trade between the newly independent United States and Britain after 1783 seemed to confirm Smith's view that political control was not necessary for economic success.[71][72]

text: The war to the south influenced British policy in Canada, where between 40,000 and 100,000[73] defeated Loyalists had migrated from the new United States following independence.[74] The 14,000 Loyalists who went to the Saint John and Saint Croix river valleys, then part of Nova Scotia, felt too far removed from the provincial government in Halifax, so London split off New Brunswick as a separate colony in 1784.[75] The Constitutional Act of 1791 created the provinces of Upper Canada (mainly English-speaking) and Lower Canada (mainly French-speaking) to defuse tensions between the French and British communities, and implemented governmental systems similar to those employed in Britain, with the intention of asserting imperial authority and not allowing the sort of popular control of government that was perceived to have led to the American Revolution.[76]

text: Tensions between Britain and the United States escalated again during the Napoleonic Wars, as Britain tried to cut off American trade with France and boarded American ships to impress men into the Royal Navy. The US declared war, the War of 1812, and invaded Canadian territory. In response Britain invaded the US, but the pre-war boundaries were reaffirmed by the 1814 Treaty of Ghent, ensuring Canada's future would be separate from that of the United States.[77][78]

text: Rise of the "Second" British Empire (1783–1815)

text: Exploration of the Pacific

text: Since 1718, transportation to the American colonies had been a penalty for various offences in Britain, with approximately one thousand convicts transported per year across the Atlantic.[79] Forced to find an alternative location after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in 1783, the British government turned to the newly discovered lands of Australia.[80] The western coast of Australia had been discovered for Europeans by the Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon in 1606 and was later named New Holland by the Dutch East India Company,[81] but there was no attempt to colonise it. In 1770 James Cook discovered the eastern coast of Australia while on a scientific voyage to the South Pacific Ocean, claimed the continent for Britain, and named it New South Wales.[82] In 1778, Joseph Banks, Cook's botanist on the voyage, presented evidence to the government on the suitability of Botany Bay for the establishment of a penal settlement, and in 1787 the first shipment of convicts set sail, arriving in 1788.[83] Britain continued to transport convicts to New South Wales until 1840.[84] The Australian colonies became profitable exporters of wool and gold,[85] mainly because of gold rushes in the colony of Victoria, making its capital Melbourne for a time the richest city in the world[86] and the second largest city (after London) in the British Empire.[87]

text: During his voyage, Cook also visited New Zealand, first discovered by Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1642, and claimed the North and South islands for the British crown in 1769 and 1770 respectively. Initially, interaction between the indigenous Māori population and Europeans was limited to the trading of goods. European settlement increased through the early decades of the 19th century, with numerous trading stations established, especially in the North. In 1839, the New Zealand Company announced plans to buy large tracts of land and establish colonies in New Zealand. On 6 February 1840, Captain William Hobson and around 40 Maori chiefs signed the Treaty of Waitangi.[88] This treaty is considered by many to be New Zealand's founding document,[89] but differing interpretations of the Maori and English versions of the text[90] have meant that it continues to be a source of dispute.[91]

text: War with Napoleonic France

text: Britain was challenged again by France under Napoleon, in a struggle that, unlike previous wars, represented a contest of ideologies between the two nations.[92] It was not only Britain's position on the world stage that was at risk: Napoleon threatened to invade Britain itself, just as his armies had overrun many countries of continental Europe.

text: The Napoleonic Wars were therefore ones in which Britain invested large amounts of capital and resources to win. French ports were blockaded by the Royal Navy, which won a decisive victory over a Franco-Spanish fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. Overseas colonies were attacked and occupied, including those of the Netherlands, which was annexed by Napoleon in 1810. France was finally defeated by a coalition of European armies in 1815.[93] Britain was again the beneficiary of peace treaties: France ceded the Ionian Islands, Malta (which it had occupied in 1797 and 1798 respectively), Mauritius, Saint Lucia, and Tobago; Spain ceded Trinidad; the Netherlands Guyana, and the Cape Colony. Britain returned Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, and Réunion to France, and Java and Suriname to the Netherlands, while gaining control of Ceylon (1795–1815).[94]

text: Abolition of slavery

text: With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, goods produced by slavery became less important to the British economy.[95] Added to this was the cost of suppressing regular slave rebellions. With support from the British abolitionist movement, Parliament enacted the Slave Trade Act in 1807, which abolished the slave trade in the empire. In 1808, Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate was designated an official British colony for freed slaves.[96] Parliamentary reform in 1832 saw the influence of the West India Committee decline. The Slavery Abolition Act, passed the following year, abolished slavery in the British Empire on 1 August 1834, finally bringing the Empire into line with the law in the UK (with the exception of St. Helena, Ceylon and the territories administered by the East India Company, though these exclusions were later repealed). Under the Act, slaves were granted full emancipation after a period of four to six years of "apprenticeship".[97] The British government compensated slave-owners.

text: Britain's imperial century (1815–1914)

text: Between 1815 and 1914, a period referred to as Britain's "imperial century" by some historians,[98][99] around 10,000,000 square miles (26,000,000 km2) of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire.[100] Victory over Napoleon left Britain without any serious international rival, other than Russia in Central Asia.[101] Unchallenged at sea, Britain adopted the role of global policeman, a state of affairs later known as the Pax Britannica,[10] and a foreign policy of "splendid isolation".[102] Alongside the formal control it exerted over its own colonies, Britain's dominant position in world trade meant that it effectively controlled the economies of many countries, such as China, Argentina and Siam, which has been described by some historians as an "Informal Empire".[103][104]

text: British imperial strength was underpinned by the steamship and the telegraph, new technologies invented in the second half of the 19th century, allowing it to control and defend the empire. By 1902, the British Empire was linked together by a network of telegraph cables, called the All Red Line.[105]

text: East India Company in Asia

text: The East India Company drove the expansion of the British Empire in Asia. The Company's army had first joined forces with the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War, and the two continued to co-operate in arenas outside India: the eviction of the French from Egypt (1799),[106] the capture of Java from the Netherlands (1811), the acquisition of Penang Island (1786), Singapore (1819) and Malacca (1824), and the defeat of Burma (1826).[101]

text: From its base in India, the Company had also been engaged in an increasingly profitable opium export trade to China since the 1730s. This trade, illegal since it was outlawed by the Qing dynasty in 1729, helped reverse the trade imbalances resulting from the British imports of tea, which saw large outflows of silver from Britain to China.[107] In 1839, the confiscation by the Chinese authorities at Canton of 20,000 chests of opium led Britain to attack China in the First Opium War, and resulted in the seizure by Britain of Hong Kong Island, at that time a minor settlement.[108]

text: During the late 18th and early 19th centuries the British Crown began to assume an increasingly large role in the affairs of the Company. A series of Acts of Parliament were passed, including the Regulating Act of 1773, Pitt's India Act of 1784 and the Charter Act of 1813 which regulated the Company's affairs and established the sovereignty of the Crown over the territories that it had acquired.[109] The Company's eventual end was precipitated by the Indian Rebellion in 1857, a conflict that had begun with the mutiny of sepoys, Indian troops under British officers and discipline.[110] The rebellion took six months to suppress, with heavy loss of life on both sides. The following year the British government dissolved the Company and assumed direct control over India through the Government of India Act 1858, establishing the British Raj, where an appointed governor-general administered India and Queen Victoria was crowned the Empress of India.[111] India became the empire's most valuable possession, "the Jewel in the Crown", and was the most important source of Britain's strength.[112]

text: A series of serious crop failures in the late 19th century led to widespread famines on the subcontinent in which it is estimated that over 15 million people died. The East India Company had failed to implement any coordinated policy to deal with the famines during its period of rule. Later, under direct British rule, commissions were set up after each famine to investigate the causes and implement new policies, which took until the early 1900s to have an effect.[113]

text: Rivalry with Russia

text: During the 19th century, Britain and the Russian Empire vied to fill the power vacuums that had been left by the declining Ottoman Empire, Qajar dynasty and Qing Dynasty. This rivalry in Central Asia came to be known as the "Great Game".[114] As far as Britain was concerned, defeats inflicted by Russia on Persia and Turkey demonstrated its imperial ambitions and capabilities and stoked fears in Britain of an overland invasion of India.[115] In 1839, Britain moved to pre-empt this by invading Afghanistan, but the First Anglo-Afghan War was a disaster for Britain.[116]

text: When Russia invaded the Turkish Balkans in 1853, fears of Russian dominance in the Mediterranean and Middle East led Britain and France to invade the Crimean Peninsula to destroy Russian naval capabilities.[116] The ensuing Crimean War (1854–56), which involved new techniques of modern warfare,[117] was the only global war fought between Britain and another imperial power during the Pax Britannica and was a resounding defeat for Russia.[116] The situation remained unresolved in Central Asia for two more decades, with Britain annexing Baluchistan in 1876 and Russia annexing Kirghizia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. For a while it appeared that another war would be inevitable, but the two countries reached an agreement on their respective spheres of influence in the region in 1878 and on all outstanding matters in 1907 with the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente.[118] The destruction of the Russian Navy by the Japanese at the Battle of Port Arthur during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 also limited its threat to the British.[119]

text: Cape to Cairo

text: The Dutch East India Company had founded the Cape Colony on the southern tip of Africa in 1652 as a way station for its ships travelling to and from its colonies in the East Indies. Britain formally acquired the colony, and its large Afrikaner (or Boer) population in 1806, having occupied it in 1795 to prevent its falling into French hands during the Flanders Campaign.[120] British immigration began to rise after 1820, and pushed thousands of Boers, resentful of British rule, northwards to found their own—mostly short-lived—independent republics, during the Great Trek of the late 1830s and early 1840s.[121] In the process the Voortrekkers clashed repeatedly with the British, who had their own agenda with regard to colonial expansion in South Africa and to the various native African polities, including those of the Sotho and the Zulu nations. Eventually the Boers established two republics which had a longer lifespan: the South African Republic or Transvaal Republic (1852–77; 1881–1902) and the Orange Free State (1854–1902).[122] In 1902 Britain occupied both republics, concluding a treaty with the two Boer Republics following the Second Boer War (1899–1902).[123]

text: In 1869 the Suez Canal opened under Napoleon III, linking the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. Initially the Canal was opposed by the British;[124] but once opened, its strategic value was quickly recognised and became the "jugular vein of the Empire".[125] In 1875, the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Isma'il Pasha's 44% shareholding in the Suez Canal for £4 million (equivalent to £350 million in 2016). Although this did not grant outright control of the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882.[126] The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position,[127] but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople, which made the Canal officially neutral territory.[128]

text: With competitive French, Belgian and Portuguese activity in the lower Congo River region undermining orderly colonisation of tropical Africa, the Berlin Conference of 1884–85 was held to regulate the competition between the European powers in what was called the "Scramble for Africa" by defining "effective occupation" as the criterion for international recognition of territorial claims.[129] The scramble continued into the 1890s, and caused Britain to reconsider its decision in 1885 to withdraw from Sudan. A joint force of British and Egyptian troops defeated the Mahdist Army in 1896, and rebuffed an attempted French invasion at Fashoda in 1898. Sudan was nominally made an Anglo-Egyptian condominium, but a British colony in reality.[130]

text: British gains in Southern and East Africa prompted Cecil Rhodes, pioneer of British expansion in Southern Africa, to urge a "Cape to Cairo" railway linking the strategically important Suez Canal to the mineral-rich south of the continent.[131] During the 1880s and 1890s, Rhodes, with his privately owned British South Africa Company, occupied and annexed territories subsequently named after him, Rhodesia.[132]

text: Changing status of the white colonies

text: The path to independence for the white colonies of the British Empire began with the 1839 Durham Report, which proposed unification and self-government for Upper and Lower Canada, as a solution to political unrest which had erupted in armed rebellions in 1837.[133] This began with the passing of the Act of Union in 1840, which created the Province of Canada. Responsible government was first granted to Nova Scotia in 1848, and was soon extended to the other British North American colonies. With the passage of the British North America Act, 1867 by the British Parliament, Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia were formed into the Dominion of Canada, a confederation enjoying full self-government with the exception of international relations.[134] Australia and New Zealand achieved similar levels of self-government after 1900, with the Australian colonies federating in 1901.[135] The term "dominion status" was officially introduced at the Colonial Conference of 1907.[136]

text: The last decades of the 19th century saw concerted political campaigns for Irish home rule. Ireland had been united with Britain into the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland with the Act of Union 1800 after the Irish Rebellion of 1798, and had suffered a severe famine between 1845 and 1852. Home rule was supported by the British Prime minister, William Gladstone, who hoped that Ireland might follow in Canada's footsteps as a Dominion within the empire, but his 1886 Home Rule bill was defeated in Parliament. Although the bill, if passed, would have granted Ireland less autonomy within the UK than the Canadian provinces had within their own federation,[137] many MPs feared that a partially independent Ireland might pose a security threat to Great Britain or mark the beginning of the break-up of the empire.[138] A second Home Rule bill was also defeated for similar reasons.[138] A third bill was passed by Parliament in 1914, but not implemented because of the outbreak of the First World War leading to the 1916 Easter Rising.[139]

text: World wars (1914–1945)

text: By the turn of the 20th century, fears had begun to grow in Britain that it would no longer be able to defend the metropole and the entirety of the empire while at the same time maintaining the policy of "splendid isolation".[140] Germany was rapidly rising as a military and industrial power and was now seen as the most likely opponent in any future war. Recognising that it was overstretched in the Pacific[141] and threatened at home by the Imperial German Navy, Britain formed an alliance with Japan in 1902 and with its old enemies France and Russia in 1904 and 1907, respectively.[142]

text: First World War

text: Britain's fears of war with Germany were realised in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War. Britain quickly invaded and occupied most of Germany's overseas colonies in Africa. In the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand occupied German New Guinea and Samoa respectively. Plans for a post-war division of the Ottoman Empire, which had joined the war on Germany's side, were secretly drawn up by Britain and France under the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement. This agreement was not divulged to the Sharif of Mecca, who the British had been encouraging to launch an Arab revolt against their Ottoman rulers, giving the impression that Britain was supporting the creation of an independent Arab state.[143]

text: The British declaration of war on Germany and its allies also committed the colonies and Dominions, which provided invaluable military, financial and material support. Over 2.5 million men served in the armies of the Dominions, as well as many thousands of volunteers from the Crown colonies.[144] The contributions of Australian and New Zealand troops during the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign against the Ottoman Empire had a great impact on the national consciousness at home, and marked a watershed in the transition of Australia and New Zealand from colonies to nations in their own right. The countries continue to commemorate this occasion on Anzac Day. Canadians viewed the Battle of Vimy Ridge in a similar light.[145] The important contribution of the Dominions to the war effort was recognised in 1917 by the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George when he invited each of the Dominion Prime Ministers to join an Imperial War Cabinet to co-ordinate imperial policy.[146]

text: Under the terms of the concluding Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919, the empire reached its greatest extent with the addition of 1,800,000 square miles (4,700,000 km2) and 13 million new subjects.[147] The colonies of Germany and the Ottoman Empire were distributed to the Allied powers as League of Nations mandates. Britain gained control of Palestine, Transjordan, Iraq, parts of Cameroon and Togoland, and Tanganyika. The Dominions themselves also acquired mandates of their own: the Union of South Africa gained South West Africa (modern-day Namibia), Australia gained New Guinea, and New Zealand Western Samoa. Nauru was made a combined mandate of Britain and the two Pacific Dominions.[148]

text: Inter-war period

text: The changing world order that the war had brought about, in particular the growth of the United States and Japan as naval powers, and the rise of independence movements in India and Ireland, caused a major reassessment of British imperial policy.[149] Forced to choose between alignment with the United States or Japan, Britain opted not to renew its Japanese alliance and instead signed the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, where Britain accepted naval parity with the United States.[150] This decision was the source of much debate in Britain during the 1930s[151] as militaristic governments took hold in Japan and Germany helped in part by the Great Depression, for it was feared that the empire could not survive a simultaneous attack by both nations.[152] The issue of the empire's security was a serious concern in Britain, as it was vital to the British economy.[153]

text: In 1919, the frustrations caused by delays to Irish home rule led the MPs of Sinn Féin, a pro-independence party that had won a majority of the Irish seats in the 1918 British general election, to establish an independent parliament in Dublin, at which Irish independence was declared. The Irish Republican Army simultaneously began a guerrilla war against the British administration.[154] The Anglo-Irish War ended in 1921 with a stalemate and the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty, creating the Irish Free State, a Dominion within the British Empire, with effective internal independence but still constitutionally linked with the British Crown.[155] Northern Ireland, consisting of six of the 32 Irish counties which had been established as a devolved region under the 1920 Government of Ireland Act, immediately exercised its option under the treaty to retain its existing status within the United Kingdom.[156]

text: A similar struggle began in India when the Government of India Act 1919 failed to satisfy demand for independence.[157] Concerns over communist and foreign plots following the Ghadar Conspiracy ensured that war-time strictures were renewed by the Rowlatt Acts. This led to tension,[158] particularly in the Punjab region, where repressive measures culminated in the Amritsar Massacre. In Britain public opinion was divided over the morality of the massacre, between those who saw it as having saved India from anarchy, and those who viewed it with revulsion.[158] The subsequent Non-Co-Operation movement was called off in March 1922 following the Chauri Chaura incident, and discontent continued to simmer for the next 25 years.[159]

text: In 1922, Egypt, which had been declared a British protectorate at the outbreak of the First World War, was granted formal independence, though it continued to be a British client state until 1954. British troops remained stationed in Egypt until the signing of the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty in 1936,[160] under which it was agreed that the troops would withdraw but continue to occupy and defend the Suez Canal zone. In return, Egypt was assisted in joining the League of Nations.[161] Iraq, a British mandate since 1920, also gained membership of the League in its own right after achieving independence from Britain in 1932.[162] In Palestine, Britain was presented with the problem of mediating between the Arabs and increasing numbers of Jews. The 1917 Balfour Declaration, which had been incorporated into the terms of the mandate, stated that a national home for the Jewish people would be established in Palestine, and Jewish immigration allowed up to a limit that would be determined by the mandatory power.[163] This led to increasing conflict with the Arab population, who openly revolted in 1936. As the threat of war with Germany increased during the 1930s, Britain judged the support of Arabs as more important than the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and shifted to a pro-Arab stance, limiting Jewish immigration and in turn triggering a Jewish insurgency.[143]

text: The right of the Dominions to set their own foreign policy, independent of Britain, was recognised at the 1923 Imperial Conference.[164] Britain's request for military assistance from the Dominions at the outbreak of the Chanak Crisis the previous year had been turned down by Canada and South Africa, and Canada had refused to be bound by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.[165][166] After pressure from the Irish Free State and South Africa, the 1926 Imperial Conference issued the Balfour Declaration of 1926, declaring the Dominions to be "autonomous Communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another" within a "British Commonwealth of Nations".[167] This declaration was given legal substance under the 1931 Statute of Westminster.[136] The parliaments of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland were now independent of British legislative control, they could nullify British laws and Britain could no longer pass laws for them without their consent.[168] Newfoundland reverted to colonial status in 1933, suffering from financial difficulties during the Great Depression.[169] The Irish Free State distanced itself further from the British state with the introduction of a new constitution in 1937, making it a republic in all but name.[170]

text: Second World War

text: Britain's declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 included the Crown colonies and India but did not automatically commit the Dominions of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa. All soon declared war on Germany, but Ireland chose to remain legally neutral throughout the war.[171]

text: After the Fall of France in June 1940, Britain and the empire stood alone against Germany, until the German invasion of Greece on 7 April 1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill successfully lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt for military aid from the United States, but Roosevelt was not yet ready to ask Congress to commit the country to war.[172] In August 1941, Churchill and Roosevelt met and signed the Atlantic Charter, which included the statement that "the rights of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live" should be respected. This wording was ambiguous as to whether it referred to European countries invaded by Germany and Italy, or the peoples colonised by European nations, and would later be interpreted differently by the British, Americans, and nationalist movements.[173][174]

text: In December 1941, Japan launched, in quick succession, attacks on British Malaya, the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, and Hong Kong. Churchill's reaction to the entry of the United States into the war was that Britain was now assured of victory and the future of the empire was safe,[175] but the manner in which British forces were rapidly defeated in the Far East irreversibly harmed Britain's standing and prestige as an imperial power.[176][177] Most damaging of all was the Fall of Singapore, which had previously been hailed as an impregnable fortress and the eastern equivalent of Gibraltar.[178] The realisation that Britain could not defend its entire empire pushed Australia and New Zealand, which now appeared threatened by Japanese forces, into closer ties with the United States. This resulted in the 1951 ANZUS Pact between Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America.[173]

text: Decolonisation and decline (1945–1997)

text: Though Britain and the empire emerged victorious from the Second World War, the effects of the conflict were profound, both at home and abroad. Much of Europe, a continent that had dominated the world for several centuries, was in ruins, and host to the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union, who now held the balance of global power.[179] Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a $US 4.33 billion loan from the United States,[180] the last instalment of which was repaid in 2006.[181] At the same time, anti-colonial movements were on the rise in the colonies of European nations. The situation was complicated further by the increasing Cold War rivalry of the United States and the Soviet Union. In principle, both nations were opposed to European colonialism. In practice, however, American anti-communism prevailed over anti-imperialism, and therefore the United States supported the continued existence of the British Empire to keep Communist expansion in check.[182] The "wind of change" ultimately meant that the British Empire's days were numbered, and on the whole, Britain adopted a policy of peaceful disengagement from its colonies once stable, non-Communist governments were available to transfer power to. This was in contrast to other European powers such as France and Portugal,[183] which waged costly and ultimately unsuccessful wars to keep their empires intact. Between 1945 and 1965, the number of people under British rule outside the UK itself fell from 700 million to five million, three million of whom were in Hong Kong.[184]

text: Initial disengagement

text: The pro-decolonisation Labour government, elected at the 1945 general election and led by Clement Attlee, moved quickly to tackle the most pressing issue facing the empire: Indian independence.[185] India's two major political parties—the Indian National Congress (led by Mahatma Gandhi) and the Muslim League (led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah)—had been campaigning for independence for decades, but disagreed as to how it should be implemented. Congress favoured a unified secular Indian state, whereas the League, fearing domination by the Hindu majority, desired a separate Islamic state for Muslim-majority regions. Increasing civil unrest and the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy during 1946 led Attlee to promise independence no later than 30 June 1948. When the urgency of the situation and risk of civil war became apparent, the newly appointed (and last) Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, hastily brought forward the date to 15 August 1947.[186] The borders drawn by the British to broadly partition India into Hindu and Muslim areas left tens of millions as minorities in the newly independent states of India and Pakistan.[187] Millions of Muslims subsequently crossed from India to Pakistan and Hindus vice versa, and violence between the two communities cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Burma, which had been administered as part of the British Raj, and Sri Lanka gained their independence the following year in 1948. India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka became members of the Commonwealth, while Burma chose not to join.[188]

text: The British mandate in Palestine, where an Arab majority lived alongside a Jewish minority, presented the British with a similar problem to that of India.[189] The matter was complicated by large numbers of Jewish refugees seeking to be admitted to Palestine following the Holocaust, while Arabs were opposed to the creation of a Jewish state. Frustrated by the intractability of the problem, attacks by Jewish paramilitary organisations and the increasing cost of maintaining its military presence, Britain announced in 1947 that it would withdraw in 1948 and leave the matter to the United Nations to solve.[190] The UN General Assembly subsequently voted for a plan to partition Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state.

text: Following the defeat of Japan in the Second World War, anti-Japanese resistance movements in Malaya turned their attention towards the British, who had moved to quickly retake control of the colony, valuing it as a source of rubber and tin.[191] The fact that the guerrillas were primarily Malayan-Chinese Communists meant that the British attempt to quell the uprising was supported by the Muslim Malay majority, on the understanding that once the insurgency had been quelled, independence would be granted.[191] The Malayan Emergency, as it was called, began in 1948 and lasted until 1960, but by 1957, Britain felt confident enough to grant independence to the Federation of Malaya within the Commonwealth. In 1963, the 11 states of the federation together with Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo joined to form Malaysia, but in 1965 Chinese-majority Singapore was expelled from the union following tensions between the Malay and Chinese populations.[192] Brunei, which had been a British protectorate since 1888, declined to join the union[193] and maintained its status until independence in 1984.

text: Suez and its aftermath

text: In 1951, the Conservative Party returned to power in Britain, under the leadership of Winston Churchill. Churchill and the Conservatives believed that Britain's position as a world power relied on the continued existence of the empire, with the base at the Suez Canal allowing Britain to maintain its pre-eminent position in the Middle East in spite of the loss of India. However, Churchill could not ignore Gamal Abdul Nasser's new revolutionary government of Egypt that had taken power in 1952, and the following year it was agreed that British troops would withdraw from the Suez Canal zone and that Sudan would be granted self-determination by 1955, with independence to follow.[194] Sudan was granted independence on 1 January 1956.

text: In July 1956, Nasser unilaterally nationalised the Suez Canal. The response of Anthony Eden, who had succeeded Churchill as Prime Minister, was to collude with France to engineer an Israeli attack on Egypt that would give Britain and France an excuse to intervene militarily and retake the canal.[195] Eden infuriated US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, by his lack of consultation, and Eisenhower refused to back the invasion.[196] Another of Eisenhower's concerns was the possibility of a wider war with the Soviet Union after it threatened to intervene on the Egyptian side. Eisenhower applied financial leverage by threatening to sell US reserves of the British pound and thereby precipitate a collapse of the British currency.[197] Though the invasion force was militarily successful in its objectives,[198] UN intervention and US pressure forced Britain into a humiliating withdrawal of its forces, and Eden resigned.[199][200]

text: The Suez Crisis very publicly exposed Britain's limitations to the world and confirmed Britain's decline on the world stage, demonstrating that henceforth it could no longer act without at least the acquiescence, if not the full support, of the United States.[201][202][203] The events at Suez wounded British national pride, leading one MP to describe it as "Britain's Waterloo"[204] and another to suggest that the country had become an "American satellite".[205] Margaret Thatcher later described the mindset she believed had befallen Britain's political leaders as "Suez syndrome" where they “went from believing that Britain could do anything to an almost neurotic belief that Britain could do nothing”,[206] from which Britain did not recover until the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands from Argentina in 1982.[207]

text: While the Suez Crisis caused British power in the Middle East to weaken, it did not collapse.[208] Britain again deployed its armed forces to the region, intervening in Oman (1957), Jordan (1958) and Kuwait (1961), though on these occasions with American approval,[209] as the new Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's foreign policy was to remain firmly aligned with the United States.[204] Britain maintained a military presence in the Middle East for another decade. On 16 January 1968, a few weeks after the devaluation of the pound, Prime Minister Harold Wilson and his Defence Secretary Denis Healey announced that British troops would be withdrawn from major military bases East of Suez, which included the ones in the Middle East, and primarily from Malaysia and Singapore by the end of 1971, instead of 1975 as earlier planned.[210] By that time over 50,000 British military personnel were still stationed in the Far East, including 30,000 in Singapore.[211] The British withdrew from Aden in 1967, Bahrain in 1971, and the Maldives in 1976.[212]

text: Wind of change

text: Macmillan gave a speech in Cape Town, South Africa in February 1960 where he spoke of "the wind of change blowing through this continent".[213] Macmillan wished to avoid the same kind of colonial war that France was fighting in Algeria, and under his premiership decolonisation proceeded rapidly.[214] To the three colonies that had been granted independence in the 1950s—Sudan, the Gold Coast and Malaya—were added nearly ten times that number during the 1960s.[215]

text: Britain's remaining colonies in Africa, except for self-governing Southern Rhodesia, were all granted independence by 1968. British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was not a peaceful process. Kenyan independence was preceded by the eight-year Mau Mau Uprising. In Rhodesia, the 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the white minority resulted in a civil war that lasted until the Lancaster House Agreement of 1979, which set the terms for recognised independence in 1980, as the new nation of Zimbabwe.[216]

text: In the Mediterranean, a guerrilla war waged by Greek Cypriots ended in 1960 leading to an independent Cyprus, with the UK retaining the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. The Mediterranean islands of Malta and Gozo were amicably granted independence from the UK in 1964 and became the country of Malta, though the idea had been raised in 1955 of integration with Britain.[217]

text: Most of the UK's Caribbean territories achieved independence after the departure in 1961 and 1962 of Jamaica and Trinidad from the West Indies Federation, established in 1958 in an attempt to unite the British Caribbean colonies under one government, but which collapsed following the loss of its two largest members.[218] Barbados achieved independence in 1966 and the remainder of the eastern Caribbean islands in the 1970s and 1980s,[218] but Anguilla and the Turks and Caicos Islands opted to revert to British rule after they had already started on the path to independence.[219] The British Virgin Islands,[220] Cayman Islands and Montserrat opted to retain ties with Britain,[221] while Guyana achieved independence in 1966. Britain's last colony on the American mainland, British Honduras, became a self-governing colony in 1964 and was renamed Belize in 1973, achieving full independence in 1981. A dispute with Guatemala over claims to Belize was left unresolved.[222]

text: British territories in the Pacific acquired independence in the 1970s beginning with Fiji in 1970 and ending with Vanuatu in 1980. Vanuatu's independence was delayed because of political conflict between English and French-speaking communities, as the islands had been jointly administered as a condominium with France.[223] Fiji,[224] Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea chose to become Commonwealth realms.

text: End of empire

text: In 1980, Southern Rhodesia, Britain's last African colony, became the independent nation of Zimbabwe. The New Hebrides achieved independence (as Vanuatu) in 1980, with Belize following suit in 1981. The passage of the British Nationality Act 1981, which reclassified the remaining Crown colonies as "British Dependent Territories" (renamed British Overseas Territories in 2002)[225] meant that, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts, the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve in defending its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire.[226] Britain's ultimately successful military response to retake the islands during the ensuing Falklands War was viewed by many to have contributed to reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world power.[227] The same year, the Canadian government severed its last legal link with Britain by patriating the Canadian constitution from Britain. The 1982 Canada Act passed by the British parliament ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution.[19] Similarly, the Australia Act 1986 (effective 3 March 1986) severed the constitutional link between Britain and the Australian states, while New Zealand's Constitution Act 1986 (effective 1 January 1987) reformed the constitution of New Zealand to sever its constitutional link with Britain.[228] In 1984, Brunei, Britain's last remaining Asian protectorate, gained its independence.

text: In September 1982 the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, travelled to Beijing to negotiate with the Chinese government, on the future of Britain's last major and most populous overseas territory, Hong Kong.[229] Under the terms of the 1842 Treaty of Nanking, Hong Kong Island itself had been ceded to Britain in perpetuity, but the vast majority of the colony was constituted by the New Territories, which had been acquired under a 99-year lease in 1898, due to expire in 1997.[230][231] Thatcher, seeing parallels with the Falkland Islands, initially wished to hold Hong Kong and proposed British administration with Chinese sovereignty, though this was rejected by China.[232] A deal was reached in 1984—under the terms of the Sino-British Joint Declaration, Hong Kong would become a special administrative region of the People's Republic of China, maintaining its way of life for at least 50 years.[233] The handover ceremony in 1997 marked for many,[17] including Charles, Prince of Wales,[18] who was in attendance, "the end of Empire".[19][20]

text: Legacy

text: Britain retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles, which were renamed the British Overseas Territories in 2002.[234] Three are uninhabited except for transient military or scientific personnel;[234] the remaining eleven are self-governing to varying degrees and are reliant on the UK for foreign relations and defence. The British government has stated its willingness to assist any Overseas Territory that wishes to proceed to independence, where that is an option,[235] and three territories have specifically voted to remain under British sovereignty (Bermuda in 1995, Gibraltar in 2002 and the Falkland Islands in 2013).[236]

text: British sovereignty of several of the overseas territories is disputed by their geographical neighbours: Gibraltar is claimed by Spain, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are claimed by Argentina, and the British Indian Ocean Territory is claimed by Mauritius and Seychelles.[237] The British Antarctic Territory is subject to overlapping claims by Argentina and Chile, while many countries do not recognise any territorial claims in Antarctica.[238]

text: Most former British colonies and protectorates are among the 52 member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, a non-political, voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2.2 billion people.[239] Sixteen Commonwealth realms voluntarily continue to share the British monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, as their head of state. These sixteen nations are distinct and equal legal entities – the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Papua New Guinea, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.[240]

text: Decades, and in some cases centuries, of British rule and emigration have left their mark on the independent nations that arose from the British Empire. The empire established the use of English in regions around the world. Today it is the primary language of up to 460 million people and is spoken by about one and a half billion as a first, second or foreign language.[241]

text: The spread of English from the latter half of the 20th century has been helped in part by the cultural and economic influence of the United States, itself originally formed from British colonies. Except in Africa where nearly all the former colonies have adopted the presidential system, the English parliamentary system has served as the template for the governments for many former colonies, and English common law for legal systems.[242]

text: The British Judicial Committee of the Privy Council still serves as the highest court of appeal for several former colonies in the Caribbean and Pacific. British missionaries who travelled around the globe often in advance of soldiers and civil servants spread Protestantism (including Anglicanism) to all continents. The British Empire provided refuge for religiously persecuted continental Europeans for hundreds of years.[243] British colonial architecture, such as in churches, railway stations and government buildings, can be seen in many cities that were once part of the British Empire.[244]

text: Individual and team sports developed in Britain — particularly golf, football, cricket, rugby, netball, lawn bowls, hockey and lawn tennis — were also exported.[245] The British choice of system of measurement, the imperial system, continues to be used in some countries in various ways. The convention of driving on the left hand side of the road has been retained in much of the former empire.[246]

text: Political boundaries drawn by the British did not always reflect homogeneous ethnicities or religions, contributing to conflicts in formerly colonised areas. The British Empire was also responsible for large migrations of peoples. Millions left the British Isles, with the founding settler populations of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand coming mainly from Britain and Ireland. Tensions remain between the white settler populations of these countries and their indigenous minorities, and between white settler minorities and indigenous majorities in South Africa and Zimbabwe. Settlers in Ireland from Great Britain have left their mark in the form of divided nationalist and unionist communities in Northern Ireland. Millions of people moved to and from British colonies, with large numbers of Indians emigrating to other parts of the empire, such as Malaysia and Fiji, and Chinese people to Malaysia, Singapore and the Caribbean.[247] The demographics of Britain itself were changed after the Second World War owing to immigration to Britain from its former colonies.[248]