Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: When did the British Empire end?
By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britain's economic lead. Subsequent military and economic tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, during which Britain relied heavily upon its empire. The conflict placed enormous strain on the military, financial and manpower resources of Britain. Although the British Empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after World War I, Britain was no longer the world's pre-eminent industrial or military power. In the Second World War, Britain's colonies in East and Southeast Asia were occupied by Japan. Despite the final victory of Britain and its allies, the damage to British prestige helped to accelerate the decline of the empire. India, Britain's most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence as part of a larger decolonisation movement in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire. The transfer of Hong Kong to China in 1997 marked for many the end of the British Empire.[17][18][19][20] Fourteen overseas territories remain under British sovereignty.
In 1869 the Suez Canal opened under Napoleon III, linking the Mediterranean with the Indian Ocean. Initially the Canal was opposed by the British;[123] but once opened, its strategic value was quickly recognised and became the "jugular vein of the Empire".[124] In 1875, the Conservative government of Benjamin Disraeli bought the indebted Egyptian ruler Isma'il Pasha's 44% shareholding in the Suez Canal for £4 million (equivalent to £370million in 2018). Although this did not grant outright control of the strategic waterway, it did give Britain leverage. Joint Anglo-French financial control over Egypt ended in outright British occupation in 1882.[125] The French were still majority shareholders and attempted to weaken the British position,[126] but a compromise was reached with the 1888 Convention of Constantinople, which made the Canal officially neutral territory.[127]
It was marked by the collapse of the Spanish, Napoleonic, Holy Roman and Mughal empires. This paved the way for the growing influence of the British Empire, the Russian Empire, the United States, the German Empire (essentially replacing the Holy Roman Empire), the French colonial empire and Meiji Japan, with the British boasting unchallenged dominance after 1815. After the defeat of the French Empire and its allies in the Napoleonic Wars, the British and Russian empires expanded greatly, becoming the world's leading powers. The Russian Empire expanded in central and far eastern Asia. The British Empire grew rapidly in the first half of the century, especially with the expansion of vast territories in Canada, Australia, South Africa and heavily populated India, and in the last two decades of the century in Africa. By the end of the century, the British Empire controlled a fifth of the world's land and one quarter of the world's population. During the post-Napoleonic era, it enforced what became known as the Pax Britannica, which had ushered in unprecedented globalization and economic integration on a massive scale.
The Zanj Empire was a 19th-century political formation established by the Omani sultanate on the Swahili Coast. Known for its slave-trading activities in conjunction with the local Swahili people, at its peak the polity's reach stretched as far as Eastern Congo. Eventually, the "Empire" collapsed when the British, intent on ending the slave trade, overtook it and incorporated it into the British Empire in 1896.
Interactions between Ottomans and Britons occurred throughout history, but in the 18th century, European visitors and residents in the Ottoman Empire markedly increased, and exploded in the 19th century. As such, fashion is one method to gauge the increased interactions. Historically, Europeans clothing was more delineated between male and female dress. Hose and trousers were reserved for men, and skirts were for women. Conversely, in the Ottoman Empire, male and female dress was more similar. A common item worn by both was the şalvar, a voluminous undergarment in white fabric shaped like what are today called "harem pants". To British women traveling in the Ottoman Empire, the şalvar quickly became a symbol of freedom because they observed that Ottoman women had more rights than British women did. Lady Mary Wortley Montague (1689–1762), whose husband was the British Ambassador to Constantinople, noted in her travels in her "Embassy Letters" that Ottoman women "possessed legal property rights and protections that far surpassed the rights of Western women". These female travelers often gained an intimate view of Ottoman culture, since as women, they had easier access to the Muslim Elite harems than did men. Şalvar successfully spread into Europe at the end of the 19th century as various female suffragists and feminists used şalvar as a symbol of emancipation. Other British women of distinction, such as Lady (Janey) Archibal Campbell (1845–1923), and Lady Ottoline (Violet Anne) Morrell (1873–1938) wore şalvar "in an attempt to symbolize their refusal of traditional British standards and sexual differences". Şalvar also spread beyond Europe when Amelia Jenks Bloomer modified these "Turkish trousers" to create American "bloomers". 
From 1882 onwards, Egypt's status became deeply convoluted: officially a province of the Ottoman Empire, semi-officially a virtually independent state with its own monarchy, armed forces, and territorial possessions in Sudan, and for practical purposes a British puppet. The legal fiction of Ottoman sovereignty in Egypt was finally ended in 1914 when the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers in First World War. Alarmed that the anti-British Khedive Abbas II would side with the Ottomans, the British deposed him in favor of his uncle Hussein Kamel and declared Egypt a British protectorate. Symbolizing the official end of Ottoman rule, Hussein Kamel took the title Sultan as did his brother Fuad I who succeeded him in 1917, though in reality Egypt remained under British domination. Both Hussein Kamel and Fuad maintained Egypt's claim to Sudan, with Egyptian nationalists declaring both in turn to be the "Sultan of Egypt and Sudan".
Ashley Jackson argued in 2013 that historians have even extended to a third and fourth empire:
The first Empire was founded in the 17th century, and based on the migration of large numbers of settlers to the American, as well as the development of the sugar plantation colonies in the West Indies. It ended with the British loss of the American War for Independence. The second Empire had already started to emerge. It was originally designed as a chain of trading ports and naval bases. However, it expanded inland into the control of large numbers of natives when the East India Company proved highly successful in taking control of most of India. India became the keystone of the Second Empire, along with colonies later developed across Africa. A few new settler colonies were also built up in Australia and New Zealand, and to a lesser extent in South Africa. Marshall in 1999 shows the consensus of scholars is clear, for since 1900 the concepts of the First British Empire have "held their ground in historians' usage without serious challenge." In 1988 Peter Marshall says that late-18th-century transformations:
Historians, however, debate whether 1783 was a sharp line of demarcation between First and Second, or whether there was an overlap (as argued by Vincent T. Harlow) or whether there was a "black hole between 1783 and the later birth of the Second Empire. Historian Denis Judd says the "black hole" is a fallacy and that there was continuity. Judd writes: It is commonplace to suppose that the successful revolt of the American colonies marked the end of the 'First British Empire'. But this is only a half-truth. In 1783 there was still a substantial Empire left." Marshall notes that the exact dating of the two empires varies, with 1783 a typical demarcation point. Thus the story of the American revolt provides a key: "The Fall of the First British Empire: Origins of the Wars of American Independence" (1982) by American professors Robert W. Tucker and David Hendrickson, stresses the victorious initiative of the Americans. By contrast Cambridge professor Brendan Simms explores "Three Victories and a Defeat: The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire, 1714–1783" (2007) and explains Britain's defeat in terms of alienating the major powers on the Continent.
After the cessation of hostilities at the end of the American Revolution, animosity and suspicion continued between the United States and the United Kingdom, erupting in 1812 when the Americans declared war on the British. Among the reasons for the war was British harassment of US ships (including impressment of American seamen into the Royal Navy), a byproduct of British involvement in the ongoing Napoleonic Wars. The Americans did not possess a navy capable of challenging the Royal Navy, and so an invasion of Canada was proposed as the only feasible means of attacking the British Empire. Americans on the western frontier also hoped an invasion would not only bring an end to British support of aboriginal resistance to the westward expansion of the United States, but also finalize their claim to the western territories.
The Colony of Singapore was a British Crown colony that existed from 1946 until 1963, when Singapore became part of Malaysia. When the Empire of Japan surrendered to the Allies at the end of World War II, the island was handed back to the British in 1945. In 1946, the Straits Settlements were dissolved and Singapore together with the Cocos-Keeling and Christmas islands became a separate Crown colony. The colony was governed by the British Empire until it gained partial internal self-governance in 1955.
The Sikh Empire was finally dissolved, after a series of wars with the British at the end of the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849, into separate princely states and the British province of Punjab, which were granted statehood. Eventually, a Lieutenant Governorship was formed in Lahore as a direct representative of the British Crown.
The Cis-Sutlej states, including Kaithal, Patiala, Jind, Thanesar, Maler Kotla, and Faridkot, were under the suzerainty of the Scindhia dynasty of the Maratha Empire, following the Second Anglo-Maratha War of 1803–1805, when Marathas lost this territory to the British. During the war, some of the states in the region gave their allegiance to British General Gerard Lake. At the conclusion of the Second Anglo-Maratha War, an 1809 agreement with Ranjit Singh, ruler of the Sikh Empire west of the Sutlej, brought these states under formal British protection.
When the American anger at the British and French intervention was felt at Whitehall, the British government fractured between those who saw the futility of maintaining the British Empire, those who saw the potential threat the Americans posed to the overall British economy should they end financial support of the British economy, and those British interests which still saw a need, a necessity and a reason for maintaining the British Empire. Thus, when the Eisenhower Administration initiated an oil embargo on the British and French, there was immediate panic in the British government. The French however were proving more resolute and flouted American demands stating matter of factly that America had no interest in the Middle East and were duplicitous in their support of Arab nationalism and anti-colonialism.
In the economic sphere, British informal empire was driven by the free trade economic system of the Empire. In the so-called "Imperialism of Free Trade" thesis, as articulated by historians Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, the British Empire expanded as much by the growth of informal empire as it did by acquiring formal dominion over colonies. Furthermore, British investment in empire was to be found not only in the formal Empire, but also in the informal empire – and, by Robinson and Gallagher's account, was indeed predominantly located in the informal empire. It is estimated that between 1815 and 1880, £1,187,000,000 in credit had accumulated abroad, but no more than one-sixth was placed in the formal empire. Even by 1913, less than half of the £3,975,000,000 of foreign investment lay inside the formal Empire.
Before the First World War, the British pound sterling was the most important international currency, and the City of London was the world's most important financial centre. More than 60 per cent of global trade was financed, invoiced, and settled in sterling, and the largest proportion of official reserves, apart from gold, was held in sterling. Although not all the territories of the British Empire used sterling as their local currency, most of those that did not pegged their local currency at a fixed rate to sterling, as did many foreign countries outside the Empire. When Britain left the gold standard in 1931, many countries that had pegged their currencies to gold pegged their currencies to sterling instead; this group of countries became known as the "sterling bloc", though the term "sterling area" was used officially from at least 1935. When the Second World War broke out, the sterling bloc countries within the British Empire shared a desire to protect the external value of sterling; legislation was therefore passed throughout the Empire formalising the British sterling bloc countries into a single exchange control area.
In the mid-1930s, Dewar was the Canadian freestyle record holder in numerous freestyle events including the 100-yard and one-mile races. In international competitions, she won four gold medals at the 1934 British Empire Games and her final gold at the 1938 British Empire Games. She also competed at the 1936 Summer Olympics but did not medal. After ending her swimming career in the late 1930s, Dewar served in the Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service. 
Newfoundland competed separately at the 1930 British Empire Games, but did not win any medals. Newfoundland also sent a team to the 1934 British Empire Games, but from 1938 has competed as part of Canada. 
British explorers were the first Europeans to enter Adamawa territory when they came in 1822. The German Dr. Gustav Nachtigal was the first Westerner to explore the region extensively, which he did between 1869 and 1873. Nachtigal kept a keen eye out to notice what groups lived in the region, what their relations were like with their neighbours, and what resources could possibly be exploited from the area. The British Eduard E. Flegel followed Nachtigal in 1882. He explored the Adamawa emirate, setting up trade and reaching as far south as Banyo. He died in 1883, however, still on expedition, and peaceful contact between the West and the Fulbe empire came to an end. Instead, Germany annexed part of Adama's empire in 1884, and the other part became part of British Nigeria. As far as Europe was concerned, the Adama emirate no longer existed.
Many consider that Alexandretta had been traditionally part of Syria. Maps as far back as 1764 confirm this. During the First World War in which the Ottoman Empire was defeated most of Syria was occupied by the British forces. But when the Armistice of Mudros was signed at the end of the war, Hatay was a still part of the Ottoman Empire. Nevertheless, after the armistice it was occupied by the British forces an operation which was never accepted by the Ottoman side. Later like the rest of Syria it was handed to France by the British Empire.
Lancashire has appeared in the feature films "And When Did You Last See Your Father?" and "Dad's Army" and has returned to West End Theatre several times since her 1990 stint in "Blood Brothers". Her combined acting credits have earned Lancashire a number of awards and nominations over a career spanning four decades and a prominent status within the British Television Industry of the 21st century. Lancashire was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to drama.
To fully understand the history of rugby in the three East African nations of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, it must first be understood that at the time the sport was introduced to the region these three countries were part of the British Empire. East Africa had been divided between the British and German colonial empires until the end of the First World War when the vast majority of German influence was handed to the British. Kenya, Uganda and Zanzibar had been under British influence since the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whilst Tanganyika was transferred to British control in 1919.
Slavery was thus ended in Upper Canada long before it was abolished in the British Empire as a whole. By 1810, there were no slaves in Upper Canada, but the Crown did not abolish slavery throughout the Empire until 1834.
British Mauritius was a British crown colony off the Southeast coast of Africa. Formerly part of the French colonial empire, the crown colony of Mauritius was established after a British invasion in 1810 and the subsequent Treaty of Paris that followed. British rule ended on 12 March 1968, when Mauritius became independent.
In 1922, the original Medal of the Order of the British Empire was split into two, the Medal of the Order of the British Empire for Gallantry (EGM) awarded for acts of gallantry, and the Medal of the Order of the British Empire for Meritorious Service that is generally known as the British Empire Medal (BEM) awarded for meritorious services and was the lower level award of the Order of the British Empire. The EGM was awarded until 1940, when it was superseded by the George Cross.
Slavery was restricted throughout the British Empire by the Slave Trade Act of 1807, which prevented trading slaves, but did not actually end slavery. In 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act ended slavery throughout the British Empire.
The King of Portugal's vast territory of Brazil reformed into the independent Empire of Brazil. With the defeat of Napoleonic France, Britain became undoubtedly the most powerful country in the world, and by the end of the First World War controlled a Quarter of the world's population and a third of its surface. However, the power of the British Empire did not end on land, since it had the greatest navy on the planet. Electricity, steel, and petroleum enabled Germany to become a great international power that raced to create empires of its own.
However, Cyprus' status as a protectorate of the British Empire ended in 1914 when the Ottoman Empire declared war against the Triple Entente powers, which included Great Britain. Cyprus was then annexed by the British Empire on 5 November 1914. During the course of the First World War Britain offered to cede Cyprus to Greece if they would fulfill treaty obligations to attack Bulgaria, but Greece declined. 