The Unofficial British Royal Family Pages

Empires Past : The Crown's Overseas Territories Before the British Empire

Elizabeth II is Queen of sixteen Commonwealth realms, and Head of a Commonwealth of 53 nations, comprising nearly a quarter of the World's population. The Commonwealth evolved out of the British Empire, which had its origins in North America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and expanded into Africa and Asia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Empire was built primarily by conquest and settlement, with new territories being defined and new regimes instituted under the auspices of the Crown of England, and then of Britain.

However, the British Empire was not the first instance of English sovereigns ruling overseas territories. There were earlier unions of Crowns, and other means of achieving those unions than by the English setting out to conquer other lands. In fact, only one sovereign since Edward the Confessor has been without a claim to lands beyond the British Isles.

The earliest English kings to also possess foreign territories did so not by conquering them from England, which was once a relatively remote and inconsequential kingdom, but by conquering England from their own realms. After the departure of the Romans in the fifth century AD, England was invaded by Angles, Saxons and Jutes, who pushed the native Celts to the peripheries of Britain and established their own kingdoms. Since these invaders were not kings in their homelands, it wasn't until the eleventh century that English and foreign lands were united under a single ruler.

The first such ruler is often not even included in lists of monarchs. Sweyn Forkbeard was King of Denmark and Norway at the beginning of the 11th century, and was involved in numerous Viking raids against the English before setting sail with a full-scale invasion fleet in 1013 and seizing the kingdom from its Saxon ruler, Ethelred the Unready. Sweyn died only a few weeks later, though, and Ethelred was restored to his kingdom while the Danish fleet, including Sweyn's son Canute, returned home.

The Danish royals had not given up on their English aspirations. Ethelred reigned for only another fourteen months until his death and was succeeded by his son, Edmund II (Ironside). Edmund was defeated a few months later during a successful Danish invasion led by Canute, was who proclaimed king. Canute was not king of Denmark at the time, but became so on the death of his elder brother in 1018. He added Norway to his crowns in 1028, and also became ruler of Schleswig and Pomerania. Although a Dane, Canute spent much of his reign in England.

After Canute's death in 1035, his son and heir, Harthacanute, was too pre-occupied in Denmark to take control of the kingdom, and delegated the government to his younger brother, Harold, and others. Harold seized the crown for himself in 1037, but died in 1040, just as Harthacanute was preparing an invasion. Harthacanute's short reign was the last time the English and Danish crowns were united, and he was succeeded on his death by the Saxon Edward the Confessor.

England's longest association with a foreign land - France - began 36 years later, when William, Duke of Normandy, defeated the English and acquired the crown at the Battle of Hastings. With only short breaks, English monarchs were to govern parts of mainland France for the next five and a half centuries, and today are still sovereigns of the Channel Islands, which are geographically part of Normandy.

Initially, it seemed that the entanglement of English and French lands would be short-lived, because William the Conqueror bequeathed the duchy to his eldest son, Robert, but the kingdom to his second son, William II. Relations between the brothers, and between Robert and William's successor, Henry I, were often confrontational, and in 1106 Henry conquered Normandy, reuniting it with the English crown. However, it was not sovereign English territory, but a duchy within the Kingdom of France, and Henry and his successors were, technically, vassals of the French kings, while at the same time being kings in their own right north of the Channel.

The greatest period of English rule in France began with the reign of Henry II, who inherited England and Normandy through his mother, succeeded his father as Count of Anjou, and became Duke of Aquitaine in right of his wife, Eleanor. His "Angevin Empire" included over half of France, making him more powerful there than the King of France himself. Unlike more recent overseas domains of the Crown, the French possessions were not some far-off dependencies, but were, in some ways, more significant possessions than England itself.

In 1204, King John lost Anjou and Normandy (except the Channel Islands) to the French crown, but the English crown retained Aquitaine. English fortunes in France varied over the next two and a half centuries, particularly when Edward III (1327-77) began attempting to regain the English monarchs' ancestral territories and laid claim to the Crown of France itself, by right of descent from his mother, the sister of France's last Capetian king. The series of conflicts which ensued are known to history as the Hundred Years War, and included the capture of Calais in 1347 and the recognition of Henry V of England as heir to the French throne in 1420. Henry died only two years later, before being able to consolidate his position, and during the reign of his son, Henry VI, the French, under Charles VII, drove the English out of all France except Calais.

Calais remained in English hands until 1558 and was an important gateway to the continent for English trade. As a result of its loss, Elizabeth I became the first English sovereign to succeed to the throne with no overseas possessions, but by the end of her reign, claims had been made to territories in North America, and these expanded into substantial colonies during the following century.

A British presence on the European mainland was re-established in 1713, when Spain ceded Gibraltar at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, and in the following year, the German elector of Hanover became King of Great Britain as George I, again creating a situation in which the British sovereign held foreign territory other than by right of conquest or settlement from Britain. Although worn by the same person, the crowns remained separate, and were divided between two people again in 1837, when Salic law prevented Queen Victoria from succeeding to a German crown.

- Paul James