Migrations and Cultural Differences Children throughout the Empire

The nineteenth century witnessed unprecedented movements of people around the globe. While exploration and colonial expansion were not new, they reached their height in the last quarter of the century, when British colonial rule extended throughout the world. The notion that the sun never set on the British Empire was visually reinforced in maps of the period, on which British dominions were colored pink or red and occupied some portion of every habitable continent. Meanwhile, the United States, which not long before had been a British colony, became in its own right a colonial power, through the slave trade, the gradual, forcible acquisition of Native American lands, and incursions into the Pacific as well as into Spanish colonies such as the Philippines.