British Empire The British Empire was the name used by the United Kingdom during its time as a colonial power . In the 18th and 19th centuries , the British established a lucrative opium trade in India and China . In December 1800 , the British Trade Concession in Canton was threatened by a local uprising stoked by the Chinese Emperor and his Chief Astrologer who sought to stamp out the harmful and corrupt opium trade . ( PROSE : " Foreign Devils " ) In the late 1830s until 1842 , the Empire went to war with Afghanistan after occupying the country in a gambit to prevent Russia n expansion in Central Asia from encroaching on British territory in India . After a disastrous performance from the British Army , a new army invaded Afghanistan to put an end to the war . ( PROSE : " Mire and Clay " ) Some years later , the Empire fought a second war against the Afghans . ( PROSE : " All - Consuming Fire " ) By 1850 , it was the most powerful empire in the history of Earth up to that point . ( AUDIO : " " ) Before the 1860s , the Empire fought alongside the French against the Chinese Empire in the Opium Wars . ( PROSE : " The Eleventh Tiger " , " The Nightmare Fair " , AUDIO : " The Nightmare Fair " ) In the 1860s , after the wars had ended , the British continued station troops in China . ( PROSE : " The Eleventh Tiger " ) In 1881 , British troops were taken to Mars by a wounded Ice Warrior and sought to claim the planet in the name of the Empire and gather its mineral riches . They came into conflict with Ice Queen Iraxxa and her Ice Warriors , but departed after Colonel Godsacre made peace . ( TV : " Empress of Mars " ) In 1883 , Josiah Samuel Smith hoped to take over the British Empire by having Redvers Fenn - Cooper assassin ate Queen Victoria . ( TV : " Ghost Light " ) The Paternoster Gang protected the empire as part of their job . ( TV : " " , " Deep Breath " ) In November 1926 , anti - Empire protests took place in Burma . The tigress Dawon was captured by Lady Adela Forster in the protests . ( AUDIO : " The Emerald Tiger " ) By 1964 , many of the British Empire ' s colonies had gained independence . ( AUDIO : " State of Emergency " ) Yvonne Hartman of Torchwood One hoped to use alien artefacts to rebuild the British Empire , much to the Tenth Doctor ' s confusion . ( TV : " Army of Ghosts " ) This plan was abandoned after the Torchwood Institute ' s " old regime " was destroyed in the Battle of Canary Wharf in 2007 . ( TV : " The Sound of Drums " ) However , the British or English Empire moniker was also used to denominate several alternate variants of the United Kingdom . For the most part , these were usually more extreme versions of the British government , totalitarian states subject to xenophobia . One of these parallels was visited by the Sixth Doctor and his companion Evelyn Smythe , which came about when a time fissure caused them to appear simultaneously in England in 1903 and 2003 . In the 1903 timeline , they successfully thwarted a Dalek invasion of England , but the local authority seized them both and the remnants of the invasion , scavenging the technology and using it to establish the highly xenophobic English Empire , which by 2003 had all but subdued the entire world under its banner . The Doctor and Evelyn were imprisoned in the Tower of London , where Evelyn died of starvation ; after repeated escape attempts , the Doctor ' s guards opted to have his legs amputated . This timeline was destroyed when the Doctor intercepted the Dalek invasion fleet before they had managed to establish a foothold . While he was successful in restoring history to normal , he was unable to fully erase the taint of the Empire , worried some of it still endured in the minds of the English people . He hoped they would dare to look into the darkness and confront it , eliminating the possibility of the Empire ' s resurgence . ( AUDIO : " Jubilee " ) Another such parallel came to be due to an alternate Sabbath ' s manipulations , based on The Oracle , a malicious entity from the Time Vortex . It diverged when , on the Oracle ' s orders , various agents were spread to murder key personnel essential to the development of the computer . This version of the Empire cowed its citizens into submission and enforced its xenophobia by routinely staging acts of terrorism and blaming on minorities , terrified of the idea of change . Its ruling council , the Star Chamber , was convinced by the Oracle to prevent the development of weapons that could threaten its citizens and endanger their decent lives , though the Eighth Doctor saw through the flimsy argument and learned of the Oracle ' s manipulations . It was destroyed when Alan Turing , who was forced to become the focal point of the entire reality , was killed . ( PROSE : " The Domino Effect " ) Upon visiting Venus in the far future , Henry Gordon Jago suggested claiming the planet for Queen Victoria and the British Empire . ( AUDIO : " Voyage to Venus " )