In Chapter 2, Ferguson outlines the crucial role of mass migration and colonization in Britain’s imperial expansion. Between the 17th century and the 1950s, more than 20 million people left the British Isles. During this period, the arrival of the British was largely viewed as an unwelcome development by Indigenous peoples. The author points out that since the 1950s, this trend has been reversed: More than a million immigrants from across the former empire have emigrated to Britain, and the British government has introduced measures to restrict the number of immigrants.

Britain’s colonization strategy began with Ireland. Following violent revolts by Irish Catholics in the late 1500s, the Protestant queen, Elizabeth I, feared a potential alliance between Ireland and Spain. Under the guise of “civilizing” Ireland, she authorized its “plantation”—a colonization policy continued by King James I. Ferguson asserts that the term “plantation” amounted to “ethnic cleansing.” Irish Catholic land was confiscated and redistributed to Protestant English and Scottish settlers. “Undertakers,” who received the largest parcels of land, were required to build fortified settlements and churches, segregating Catholics beyond their walls.

The British Empire’s colonization strategy then moved on to North America. The first successful English settlement was established in Virginia after James I chartered the Virginia Company in 1606, offering 58-acre plots to English settlers at low rents. Under the leadership of John Smith, the colony of Jamestown survived its initial hardships. Tobacco cultivation, pioneered by John Rolfe, made Virginia profitable. Meanwhile, religious motives drove British migrants to New England. In 1620, the Puritans arrived aboard the Mayflower, seeking to construct godly communities. By 1640, approximately 20,000 settlers had established the Massachusetts Bay colony, sustained by fishing, farming, and fur trading. High birth rates accelerated demographic growth.

When the British arrived, Virginia was already inhabited by up to 20,000 Algonquian Indigenous persons, and Jamestown was in the Powhatan territory. There were attempts to live peacefully with the Indigenous people through trade and intermarriage, such as John Rolfe’s marriage to Pocahontas, the daughter of an Indigenous chief. However, colonizers largely justified the expropriation of Indigenous by insisting they were in need of their “civilizing” influence. The settlers also devised the term “terra nullius” (nobody’s land), arguing that, as Indigenous peoples did not enclose or farm their land, they had no rights of ownership. Those who resisted the colonization of their land were massacred. The Indigenous population also declined sharply due to contact with diseases such as smallpox, to which they had no immunity. By 1700, the original population of approximately 560,000 Indigenous peoples had halved. By 1820, only 325,000 remained. Meanwhile, settler expansion across the continent pushed tribes westward. The cultivation of crops by British settlers in North America, such as tobacco and sugar, required a steady supply of labor. Therefore, many more British migrants arrived as indentured servants, bound to years of labor in exchange for passage.

Sugar remained the most profitable crop of the British Empire. However, in the Caribbean colonies, indentured labor could not provide sufficient labor due to the high mortality rate of workers. British emigration to the West Indies declined after 1700 as people became aware of the hardships and dangers of the tropical climate. Consequently, plantation owners turned to enslavement. Around 3.5 million Africans were transported to British colonies between 1662 and 1807. Ferguson points out that even supposedly pious men such as John Newton (the composer of “Amazing Grace”) participated in the slave trade without moral misgivings. Newton’s letters revealed that, like many enslavers, he perceived Africans as “an inferior species” (78). In Jamaica, the Maroons, a community of escaped Spanish enslaved persons, raided plantations and freed enslaved persons to join their community. This guerrilla warfare was addressed by a 1739 treaty, which granted the Maroons 1,500 acres of land. The Maroons stopped their raids, and some became enslavers themselves.

The American War of Independence marked a pivotal rupture in the British Empire. Many American colonists believed that taxes like the Stamp Act of 1765, imposed from afar by the British Parliament in London, were unconstitutional. While taxes fueled resentment toward Lord North’s government, the core issue was the refusal to recognize the assemblies formed by American colonists as governments in their own right. In 1776, after withholding tax payments, 13 American colonies declared independence. Britain, already overstretched by conflict with France and lacking decisive European allies, could not sustain a prolonged war in North America and was eventually forced to cede defeat. However, when the British Army surrendered in 1781, the colonists who had remained loyal to the crown felt betrayed. Many emigrated to Canada, England, or the West Indies.

Ferguson stresses that the American rebellion was led largely by colonial elites who had, thus far, benefited from imperial commerce. Meanwhile, loyalists (approximately one-fifth of the population) suffered persecution. The author challenges the Hollywood trope portraying the war of independence as a battle between “heroic Patriots and wicked, Nazi-like Redcoats” (93). He argues that, in reality, the rebel colonists committed the worst atrocities against fellow loyal colonists. Ferguson also points out that the Declaration of Independence did not extend liberty to enslaved Africans, and enslavement persisted in the southern states long after Britain abolished the slave trade. He contends that imperial dissolution in North America delayed the emancipation of Africans and worsened the situation of Indigenous peoples, whom independent settlers treated with even fewer restraints.

Defeat in America did not end British expansion, as its aspirations were redirected toward Australasia. After Captain James Cook charted and claimed New South Wales in 1770, Australia became a British penal colony. Between 1787 and 1853, around 150,000 convicts were transported, including women and children. Their crimes ranged from political rebellion to petty theft. Under the Scottish Governor Lachlan Macquarie, Sydney was transformed into an orderly colonial capital. Convicts, though subjected to hard labor and harsh discipline, could eventually acquire land and social mobility. Some amassed considerable wealth. For example, Samuel Terry, a laborer transported for theft, acquired 19,000 acres of land, gaining the nickname “the Rothschild of Botany Bay” (105). By 1828, free settlers outnumbered convicts, and transportation gradually lost its deterrent rationale. Few convicts elected to return to Britain once their sentences were completed.

For Indigenous Australians, however, colonization was catastrophic. Lacking immunity to European diseases and displaced from hunting grounds, Aboriginal communities suffered a sharp decline. Violent frontier conflict, particularly in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), amounted to genocide of its Indigenous people. The British government sought to moderate settler brutality, appointing Aboriginal Protectors. However, these restraints did not prevent the 1838 Myall Creek massacre, where a group of cattle-ranchers murdered 28 unarmed Aborigines.

Canada had appeared to be one of the empire’s most loyal colonies until 1837, when a revolt against British rule broke out. Sent to investigate, John Lambton, the Earl of Durham, produced a report that led to the reassessment of Britain’s method of imperial governance. Lambton recommended learning from Britain’s past experiences in North America by granting Canadian colonists responsible self-government. By 1856, this principle had been implemented in Canada and was later extended to Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Governors became symbolic representatives of the Crown, while elected colonial assemblies exercised real authority. By the late 19th century, the empire had evolved from coercive settlement toward a system of settler self-rule within imperial sovereignty.