GREAT EMPIRE MAP

Evening Star, Issue 19175, 16 February 1926, Page 4

GREAT EMPIRE MAP

TRADE ROUTES ILLUSTRATED THE PGSTERGRAPH HISTORICAL REVIEW The growth of our far-flung British Empire is graphically and strikingly depicted by the great world map, witli its beautiful, almost kaleidoscopic lighting effects, displayed in the Naval Court of the British Ciovermnent Pavilion. The Interimperial trade routes are also illustrated in the best possible way by model steamers of the many steamship lines actually travelling from port to port on the map. They negotiate en route the Magellan Straits, the passage round the Capo, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, and the Mediterranean, the Panama Canal and the Gulf of Mexico, etc.; while the “postergraph ” reviews succinctly and most interestingly the history of the development of the greatest commonwealth of free nations the world has ever seen.

The postergraph brings out the fact that the British Empire comprises, not only a quarter of the laud surface, but also a quarter of the total population of the world, and this is emphasised by the lighting up on the world map of all Britain's overseas dominions and dependencies. “ The roving spirit of British seamen, and the enterprise of .merchant adventurers seeking profitable traffic across the seas, led (wo are told) to the beginning of permanent settlement in distant lands. The Pilgrim Fathers sailed for America in 1620, while by 1650 the first foundations of an overseas Empire had been laid”; and, to illustrate this, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, Barbados, Bermuda, and various points in India and on the American seaboard are lighted up on the map. By the year 1776, when the American colonies seceded and were lost to the British Crown, new fields for British settlement and enterprise were being opened up, New Zealand being circumnavigated by Captain Cook in 1769.' The additions made to the Empire in this period are shown by the Illumination of Eastern Canada, Jamaica, the Bahamas, the Leeward Islands, St. Vincent, Grenada, and Gibraltar. By 1800 a beginning had been made in the settlement of Australia, and. British, rule was also established in Ceylon, British Honduras, and Sierra Leone were added to teh Empire between 1776 and 1800, and the extent of the British Empire in 1800 is shown by tire lighting upon the map of all the areas above referred to, except the const, of the United States of,America. Before 1850 many of her distant lands were brought under the British flag, including Cape Colony, Natal, and New Zealand. A mission station from New South Wales was established at the Bay of Islands in 1814. By Royal (.'barter, dated 1840, New Zealand became a separate colony. In the same year settlers founded the City of Wellington, and other settlements followed in Nelson, Taranaki, Otago, and Canterbury. Cape Colonv, Natal, New Zealand, the Straits Settlements, Labium, Malta, British Guiana, Trinidad, the Falkland Islands, Hongkong, Mauritius, the Sovchelles, Aden, Gambia, the Gold Coast, St. Helena. Ascension, etc., are accordingly illuminated, and the whole extent of the British Empire in 1850 is similarly illustrated. The East India Company had received its charter in 1600, and the eighteenth century saw the establishment of British control in India. Finally, in 1858, the Government of India was transferred to the British Crown. The illumination of India impresses this on the beholder. During the second half of the nineteenth century the Empire expanded further in Africa and the East; Nigeria, Somaliland, Rhodesia, the Transvaal, British East Africa, Uganda, Nvasaland, the Malay States, Sarawak, North Borneo, Fiji, Cyprus, New Guinea, various Pacific Islands, and Burma (all only lighted up) coming under British rule. By the beginning of the twentieth century the early settlements ito the west and south had developed into great new countries in Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa; and the British Empire in 1900 shows a continuous chain of light girdling the whole globe. The Commonwealth of Australia was constituted in 1900; Now Zealand became a self-governing dominion in 1907; and at the time of the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 there had been added to the Empire the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and CookIslands.

When, however, the Great War closed, the responsibilities of the British Empire ’had been further increased by the addition of the following mandatory territories Palestine, Iraq, Tanganyika Territory, SouthWest Africa, Togoland, the Cameroon,s, German New Guinea, Western Samoa, and Nauru.

The postergraph, in conclusion, stresses the fact that the prosperity of the various units within our Great Empire depends upon the prosperity of the Empire as a whole, and it is pointed out that in 1924 New Zealand obtained 48 per cent, of her imports from Great Britain, and Great Britain purchased 80 per cent, of the produce exported from New Zealand.