14.1.10 to 14.1.11

New Zealand became officially British in 1840, after which systematic colonization there followed rapidly. Partly owing to pressure from missionaries, British control was extended to Fiji, Tonga, Papua, and other islands in the Pacific Ocean, and in 1877 the British High Commission for the Western Pacific Islands was created. In the wake of the Indian Mutiny (1857), the British crown assumed the East India Company's governmental authority in India. Britain's acquisition of Burma (Myanmar) was completed in 1886, while its conquest of the Punjab (1849) and of Balochistan (1854-76) provided substantial new territory in the Indian subcontinent itself. The French completion of the Suez Canal (1869) provided Britain with a much shorter sea route to India. Britain responded to this opportunity by expanding its port at Aden, establishing a protectorate in Somaliland (now Somalia), and extending its influence in the sheikhdoms of southern Arabia and the Persian Gulf. Cyprus, which was, like Gibraltar and Malta, a link in the chain of communication with India through the Mediterranean, was occupied in 1878. Elsewhere, British influence in the Far East expanded with the development of the Straits Settlements and the federated Malay states, and in the 1880s protectorates were formed over Brunei and Sarawak. Hong Kong island became British in 1841, and an "informal empire" operated in China by way of British treaty ports and the great trading city of Shanghai. The greatest 19th-century extension of British power took place in Africa, however. Britain was the acknowledged ruling force in Egypt from 1882 and in the Sudan from 1899. In the second half of the century, the Royal Niger Company began to extend British influence in Nigeria, and the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and The Gambia also became British possessions. The Imperial British East Africa Company operated in what are now Kenya and Uganda, and the British South Africa Company operated in what are now Zimbabwe (formerly Southern Rhodesia), Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia), and Malawi. Britain's victory in the South African War (1899-1902) enabled it to annex the Transvaal and the Orange Free State in 1902 and to create the Union of South Africa in 1910. The resulting chain of British territories stretching from South Africa northward to Egypt realized an enthusiastic British public's idea of an African empire extending "from the Cape to Cairo." By the end of the 19th century, the British Empire comprised nearly one-quarter of the world's land surface and more than one-quarter of its total population. (See the Map.)