Great Britain as a worldwide system of colonies dominated the world for some three centuries. The first uncertain British attempts to establish overseas settlements were made as early as the sixteenth century. Huge economic and trade success, plus maritime expansion, resulted in the seventeenth century in the establishment of settlements in North America and the West Indies. The East India Company established its first trading posts in India at the beginning of the seventeenth century and the same company helped to establish British supremacy in Penang, Singapore, Malacca and Labuan. The first permanent British settlement in Africa was on James Island in the Gambia River in 1661.

After World War I and even more so after World War II nationalist movements started to develop in most of the British colonies and the first colony to gain its independence was India in 1947, which still retained an association with Great Britain...