Sir Francis Drake was a British explorer and slave-trader in the service of England. He led the second expedition around the world in the late 1570s (Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan having led the first one). He was also known for being a privateer, that is, a pirat working for the British government. His cousin, Sir John Hawkins, was a privateer too and the first British slave trader. He was disliked by the Spanish slave traders because he threatened their slave-trading business in the Spanish West Indies, today known as the Caribbean. During one of his voyages with Drake their ships were attacked in Mexico by the Spanish fleet. This led to a war between the two countries. The conflict ended when England crushed the Spanish Armada in 1588. Now England truly became the dominant world power.
Another famous, British explorer was Sir Walter Raleigh. He led several expeditions to America in an attempt to find gold, increase trade with the "New World" and found new settlements. In 1585 he explored the east coast of North America and established a colony in the area he named Virginia, in honour of Queen Elizabeth I, also known as "the Virgin Queen" because she never married. During her reign, often called the Elizabethan Age, the uptil then small kingdom rose as a major European power in politics and trade.
At about the same time Sir Humphrey Gilbert, also a privateer, made it to North America and founded an English settelement in Newfoundland in the name of Queen Elizabeth I. Moreover, in the early 1600s Captain Christopher Newport transported settlers to the first permanent English colony in America, Jamestown, in the state of Virginia. Among these was Captain John Smith, who was to become one of the leaders of the colony.
Furthermore, in the early 1600s a group of British traders founded theEast India Company, in order to trade with India and Asia. However, as time went by, the company got involved in politics and became a representative of the British Crown. They seemed as such to be acting more as conquerors and governors than traders. By 1858 the British Crown was firmly established in India, ending a century of control by the East India Company.
We cannot forget the well-known Captain James Cook, an explorer and astronomer, who carried out numerous expeditions around the world, including to the Arctic and Antarctic. In 1770 he reached the east coast of Australia and claimed it for Great Britain. He also put New Zealand on the map.
By the end of the 1700s the British took Cape of Good Hope, near Cape Town in South-Africa, from the Dutch during the Anglo-Dutch War. However, they returned it a few years later. The Cape marks the turning point between the Atlandtic Ocean and the Indian Ocean, and is thus important in terms of trade. When Holland and Napoelon became allies during the Napoleonic Wars, the British recaptured the colony in 1806 in order to protect the sea route to their Asian empire. The first British settlers arrived in 1820, some of whom settled in what is today known as Port Elizabeth. Others settled in Eastern Cape in order to defend the border against the native Xhosa people.
When the British forbade slavery in 1835, many Afrikaners travelled to the interior of the country to found their own republics. An Afrikaner, or Boer, is a white African, generally of Dutch origin. Different opinions reagarding slavery and the discovery of gold and diamonds a couple of decades later sparked off the Boer Wars between the British and the Afrikaners. During the second war, the Afrikaners were put in concentration camps and their farms burned down. The Afrikaners realised there was no alternative but to surrender, and signed a peace treaty with the British in 1902.
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