During the eighteenth century, trade, discovery, warfare and settlement took Britons to all parts of the world.
From the very beginning of the expansionist process, those extending British maritime and commercial enterprise beyond European waters and into the wider world had directed their energies and resources towards the east as well as the west, and towards the south as well as the north.
As a result, although the overseas footholds established by the British were often uncertain and sometimes short-lived, they gradually began to constitute an empire whose chief characteristics were its diversity and widely scattered distribution. For all the obvious importance of trade and settlement in the Atlantic world, activity in Africa, India and the Pacific region was increasingly recognized as defining the full extent of British overseas ambition. Britain proved to be rather more successful than France, Holland and Spain in maintaining at least a token presence in all of the main spheres of European overseas interest, and it gradually became evident to Britons that their empire was taking a form that was unlike any other, past or present. Always seeking out comparisons and contrasts with the empires of ancient Greece, Rome and Persia, commentators duly noted that Britain was the first to exert influence in all parts of the globe. Slowly, but ever more surely after the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763, the British began to view their empire as a global one, and this found expression in their outlook, strategy, and resource calculations. Imperial attitudes had already begun to be embedded in popular political consciousness, and they now began to consolidate the identity of the British as a people who commanded a multiracial, multifaith empire of millions.1
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