Empire · approximate1880 – 1968 · 88 years
British Colonial Africa
The largest empire in history — at one point the British crown ruled a quarter of the world's land and people.
What it was
Built piecemeal from the 17th century onward through trading companies, naval power, settler colonization, and outright conquest, the British Empire reached its greatest extent in 1922 covering 35 million km² and 458 million people. Decolonization between 1947 and 1980 dismantled most of it; Hong Kong's 1997 return to China is sometimes cited as the closing date.
Why it mattered
English as a world language, common-law legal systems across five continents, the borders of dozens of modern states, and the shape of global trade are all direct legacies — for better and for very much worse.
From Wikipedia
External colonies were first founded in Africa during antiquity. Ancient Greeks and Romans established colonies on the African continent in North Africa, similar to how they established settler-colonies in parts of Eurasia. Some of these endured for centuries; however, popular parlance of colonialism in Africa usually focuses on the European conquests of African states and societies in the Scramble for Africa (1884–1914) during the age of New Imperialism, followed by gradual decolonisation after World War II.
Wikipedia: Colonisation of Africa·CC BY-SA 4.0
Borders & accuracy
Dashed borders mark empires whose extent we can date but whose precise frontiers are contested or undocumented.
- SOURCEreconstructed from Natural Earth country boundaries
- DETAILreconstructed-clipped-country
- SNAPSHOT1914
- POLITY TYPEstate
Also during this period
No conflict record yet names this polity as a belligerent; these overlap its dates only.
- World War II1939–45World-changing · 85M dead
- World War I1914–18World-changing · 20M dead
- Second Sino-Japanese War1937–45World-changing · 20M dead
- Chinese Civil War1927–49World-changing · 8.0M dead
- Eastern Front (World War I)1914–18World-changing · 6.0M dead
- The Holocaust1941–45World-changing · 6.0M dead
Open in the atlas →Seeks the timeline to 1880 and fits the map to these borders.
Cite as: British Colonial Africa (1880 – 1968). War Atlas. https://waratlas.org/e/british-colonial-africa · Sources & methodology