Question: Which countries began colonizing because they envied the empires of Portugal and Spain?
Answer: England, France, and the Netherlands

Question: Which country combined with England to form Great Britain?
Answer: Scotland

Question: When did the Thirteen Colonies become independent from Britain?
Answer: 1783

Question: Which war caused Britain to lose some of its oldest and most populous colonies?
Answer: American War of Independence

Question: In which wars was France defeated?
Answer: the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

Question: What did Pax Britannica mean?
Answer: British Peace

Question: When was Britain called the "workshop of the world"?
Answer: 1851

Question: Which countries challenged Britain's economic lead by the start of the 20th century?
Answer: Germany and the United States

Question: Which country was Britain's most valuable and populous possession?
Answer: India

Question: When did Britain transfer Hong Kong to China?
Answer: overseas territories remain under British sovereignty

Question: How many overseas territories remain under British sovereignty?
Answer: Fourteen

Question: Who is the Commonwealth's monarch?
Answer: Queen Elizabeth II

Question: When was John Cabot's voyage commissioned?
Answer: 1496

Question: Who commissioned John Cabot's voyage?
Answer: King Henry VII of England

Question: Where was Cabot trying to find a route to via the North Atlantic?
Answer: Asia

Question: Where did Cabot make landfall?
Answer: Newfoundland

Question: Which explorer did Cabot make a mistake similar to?
Answer: Christopher Columbus

Question: What had turned England and Catholic Spain into implacable enemies?
Answer: the Protestant Reformation

Question: When did John Hawkins and Francis Drake attack Spanish and Portuguese slave ships?
Answer: 1562

Question: Where did John Hawkins and Francis Drake attack Spanish and Portuguese slave ships?
Answer: off the coast of West Africa

Question: Who gave their blessing to further privateering raids against Spanish ports?
Answer: Elizabeth I

Question: Which author was the first to use the term "British Empire"?
Answer: John Dee

Question: When did Humphrey Gilbert first set sail for the West Indies?
Answer: 1578

Question: When was Humphrey Gilbert's second attempt to set sail?
Answer: 1583

Question: What was Humphrey Gilbert's second destination?
Answer: Newfoundland

Question: Who was Humphrey Gilbert's half-brother?
Answer: Walter Raleigh

Question: What colony did Walter Raleigh found?
Answer: Roanoke

Question: What was James I's name/title before taking the English throne?
Answer: James VI, King of Scots

Question: When did James I negotiate the Treaty of London?
Answer: 1604

Question: Which country did England negotiate the Treaty of London with?
Answer: Spain

Question: In what century did the English East India Company form?
Answer: 17th

Question: What period ended towards the end of the 18th century?
Answer: the "First British Empire"

Question: When did England first establish a colony in Guiana?
Answer: 1604

Question: When did England first establish a colony in St. Lucia?
Answer: 1605

Question: When did England annex the island of Jamaica from the Spanish?
Answer: 1655

Question: When did England colonize the Bahamas?
Answer: 1666

Question: What was the goal of England's colony in Guiana?
Answer: to find gold deposits

Question: When was England's first permanent settlement in the Americas founded?
Answer: 1607

Question: Where was England's first permanent settlement in the Americas?
Answer: Jamestown

Question: Who led England's first permanent settlement in the Americas?
Answer: Captain John Smith

Question: When did the Somer Isles Company take over managing Bermuda?
Answer: 1615

Question: What did England rename New Netherland to?
Answer: New York

Question: Which company had monopoly of the trade to supply slaves to the British colonies of the Caribbean?
Answer: Royal African Company

Question: When was the British slave trade abolished?
Answer: 1807

Question: How many African slaves did Britain transport to the Americas?
Answer: 3.5 million

Question: The triangular slave trade was between Africa, the Americas, and which British cities?
Answer: Bristol and Liverpool

Question: What was the death rate during the Middle Passage?
Answer: one in seven

Question: When was the Company of Scotland granted a charter?
Answer: 1695

Question: When was Panama colonized by Scotland?
Answer: 1698

Question: How long did the Scottish Panama colony survive?
Answer: two years

Question: How much Scottish capital was lost in the Panama colony attempt?
Answer: a quarter

Question: When was the Treaty of Union?
Answer: 1707

Question: When was the British East India Company chartered?
Answer: 1600

Question: When was the Dutch East India Company chartered?
Answer: 1602

Question: When had the British East India Company overtaken the Dutch East India Company in sales?
Answer: 1720

Question: How many Anglo-Dutch Wars were there in the 17th century?
Answer: three

Question: The Dutch East India Company focused on trade in which industry?
Answer: spice

Question: Which country became Britain's main rival in the 18th century?
Answer: France

Question: When did England and the Netherlands make peace?
Answer: 1688

Question: In which war were England and the Netherlands allies?
Answer: Nine Years' War

Question: In which century did Britain become the world's dominant colonial power?
Answer: 18th

Question: King Philip renounced his right to the throne after what treaty?
Answer: Treaty of Utrecht

Question: Which country did Britain acquire Newfoundland and Acadia from?
Answer: France

Question: Which country did Britain acquire Gibraltar and Minorca from?
Answer: Spain

Question: Which colony allowed Britain to control the Atlantic entry and exit point to the Mediterranean?
Answer: permission to sell slaves in Spanish America

Question: What was the Spanish term for permission to sell slaves in Spanish America?
Answer: asiento

Question: What was the French equivalent of the English East India Company?
Answer: Compagnie française des Indes orientales

Question: When was the Battle of Plassey?
Answer: 1757

Question: Who led the British in the Battle of Plassey?
Answer: Robert Clive

Question: Where were the Carnatic Wars?
Answer: British Indian Army

Question: What was the British Indian Army mostly composed of?
Answer: Indian sepoys

Question: When was the Seven Years' War?
Answer: 1756–1763

Question: When was the Treaty of Paris?
Answer: 1763

Question: Which country acquired New France from France?
Answer: Britain

Question: Which country acquired Louisiana from France?
Answer: Spain

Question: Which country acquired Florida from Spain?
Answer: Britain

Question: British relations with which area became strained in the 1760s-1770s?
Answer: the Thirteen Colonies

Question: What was the American colonists' anti-tax slogan?
Answer: "No taxation without representation"

Question: When did the US declare independence?
Answer: 1776

Question: When did France enter the American Revolution war?
Answer: 1778

Question: When did Britain recognize American independence?
Answer: 1783

Question: What book by Adam Smith was published in 1776?
Answer: Wealth of Nations

Question: The growth of trade between the US and Britain after 1783 seemed to confirm whose views?
Answer: Smith

Question: In the 'second' British Empire period, Britain refocused on which areas?
Answer: Asia, the Pacific and later Africa

Question: What had been Britain's most populous overseas possession?
Answer: British America

Question: Who argued that colonies were redundant?
Answer: Adam Smith

Question: How many British loyalists moved from the US to Canada?
Answer: between 40,000 and 100,000

Question: New Brunswick was split off from which province?
Answer: Nova Scotia

Question: Which act created the Upper Canada provinces?
Answer: The Constitutional Act of 1791