By the second quarter of the eighteenth century, the British Empire comprehended the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland, the islands of the Caribbean and the British mainland colonies of North America. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by a common religion and by the Royal Navy. The gentle, but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their free, white inhabitants enjoyed and produced the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with a decent reverence. The Hanoverian kings appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on their parliaments all the executive powers of government. During a crucial period of almost fourscore years (1688–1760), the public administration was conducted by a succession of Whig politicians. It is the design of this, and of the succeeding chapters, to describe the ideological origins of their empire, though not to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall: the American Revolution, which dismembered the British Atlantic Empire, lies beyond the immediate scope of this book.

The history of the rise, decline and fall of the British Empire has most often been told as the story of an empire whose foundations lay in India during the second half of the eighteenth century.