For purposes of political administration the empire falls into the three sections of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with the dependencies of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man; the Indian empire, consisting of British India and the feudatory native states; and the colonial empire, comprising all other colonies and dependencies.
A tendency which had seemed temporarily to point towards a complacent dissolution of the empire was arrested, and the closing years of the 19th century were marked by a growing disposition to appreciate the value and importance of the unique position which the Britishempire has created for itself in the world.
The extent of this burden was emphasized in 1909 by the revelations as to the increase of the German (and the allied Austrian) fleet.
The overseas BritishEmpire — in the sense of British oceanic exploration and settlement outside of Europe and the British Isles — was rooted in the pioneering maritime policies of King Henry VII, who reigned 1485–1509.
The BritishEmpire first took shape during the early 17th century, with the English settlement of the eastern colonies of North America, which would later become the original United States as well as Canada's Atlantic provinces, and the colonisation of the smaller islands of the Caribbean such as Jamaica and Barbados.
British withdrawal from the southern and eastern parts of Africa was complicated by the region's white settler populations: Kenya had already provided an example in the Mau Mau Uprising of violent conflict exacerbated by white landownership and reluctance to concede majority rule.
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