Jack of Harts

The rise of the British Empire set off another of the great migrations in history. England’s early expansion was slow and fitful, mainly involving the general conquering of the other nations in the British Isles. They did plant some other colonies, but the British Empire didn’t truly exist until after they fought off the global power of the other European powers. All of the great European naval powers had established trading routes throughout the world, and they fought over control of them for centuries.

The British Empire we recognize began taking shape in the 1600s, with the colonization of the, but it was the War of the Spanish Succession, the Anglo-Spanish Wars, and the Seven Years’ War in the 1700s that truly cemented its position as the preeminent empire of Earth. Their recurring conflicts with Spain ushered in the decline of the Spanish Empire that had fought the Ottomans for so long, while the Seven Years’ War between England, France, and the other major European power raged across every inhabited continent on Earth. America knows it as the French and Indian War, but it was possibly the first true world war.

The sun never set on the British Empire that emerged from that conflict. It’s early industrial progress allowed over twenty million English to board ships to colonize the world. And where the English went, so did their laws, navy, army, and their traders and bankers. They built a legal and trading network that spanned the world, and English became the language of trade. English suits became the clothing of the world’s wealthy, and English culture spread throughout the world. Even the fall of the British Empire in the 1900s did nothing to change that, as the United States took their place in backing the legal and economic network they built for the next century.

Much like the Iberian Mass Migration changed the world before it, the English Mass Migration remade the world in England’s image, and is very possibly THE greatest mass migration in history.