It looks like it should be theoretically possible to have the sun set on the Empire not just with a total eclipse on Pitcairn, but alternatively with one over the British Indian Ocean Territory.
The BIOT is perhaps best known in these circles for its .io domain names, or elsewhere as the site of a genocide of the natives by the British armed forces in the 1970s.
The next British territory west of the BIOT is Akrotiri and Dhekelia in Cyprus. [0] The next territory east is Pitcairn.
When it's 06:30 in Cyprus in the winter, it's 20:30 in Pitcairn. The sun will have set about 75 minutes previously on the latter [1], and won't rise for another 15 minutes in the former [2], so there's an hour and a half each day where the BIOT, not Pitcairn, is the only British territory where it's daytime.
And... there's a total solar eclipse coming up there as soon as 2027! [3] Unfortunately it's in the summer, in the evening, and it won't be total over the whole territory at the same time (though another eclipse could be). So it doesn't quite qualify, but to fully answer this question, the BIOT needs to be considered.
A country with overseas territories is not an empire. Lots of countries have them, but its hard to consider somewhere like New Zealand as governing an empire.
Britain is not just an empire, it's one of the paradigmatic empires — an example you'd point to when trying to explain what an empire is. Or do you just mean that it's maybe not much of an empire any more, since, as wikipedia notes, "the handover of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997 symbolised for many the end of the British Empire"?
Yeah, that's where I'd put the symbolic end date. Another candidate would be the US successfully preventing the Anglo-French-Israeli invasion of Suez in 1956.
My first passport (1970s, before that I traveled on my mum’s passport) was stamped “BRITISH SUBJECT”, though Australia was a supposedly sovereign nation. At least the UK had stopped nuking Australia by then.
'56 is too early, given how much of east Africa was under British colonial control into the 60s, and how much of S/E Asia was still looking for independence. It's likely the population of the empire was still above 100mn at the time. I'd say '56 is more like the start of the very rapid decline of the empire.
It highlighted both to the colonised and the colonisers that the empire was way over-extended.
Another "beginning of the end" moment might be the Ugandan Asians incident of 1972: the Empire had "free movement" of subjects, but only so long as very few of them used it to come to Britain.
Those who had (the right to) British passports were allowed in, right? So similar to the recent situation with regard to BN(O) people in HK.
There was a lot of free movement within the empire other than to the UK too. Many people left India, in particular, for west Africa, SE Asia. Some of my ancestors moved to Sri Lanka.
My grandfather was a "home child", basically a war orphan indentured, his contract sold to a farmer in Canada, while his brother went to Australia, never to be seen again.
But at the time, even for normal moves to Canada or other places, people were worried that their children would not be Subjects of The Empire.
So promises were made, that if subjects moved to a colony, their Grandchildren would be British". This was still a pledge in the 20s when my grandfather arrived in Canada, and thus I am eligible for a UK "Ancestry VISA".
This only works if your grandfather was born in the UK, amd went to a colony, and my point?
Well, eventually the last person capable of exercising this right will be gone. Maybe 30 years?
We've never been able to track him down, or their sister down (she was still at the orphanage, too young to ship off when they were broken up).
My grandfather was lucky in Canada. He worked dawn to dusk, but was fed well, sheltered from the elements, and learned how to manage a farm. He came out of it reasonably well.
People often say there is a history of treating Natives poorly in Canada, colonies. Yet we did it to ourselves, too.
Likewise in Australia, I am eligible for a UK passport since my father was born there, even though he emigrated in 1949 and I wasn't born until 1975.
Was a lot of fun back in the 2000's when England was still part of the Eurozone since the passport allowed me to live/work anywhere in the EU.
> The various ".. of the British Empire" awards are still being issued annually.
Yes, but that is just not changing the names of the awards because people know what they are.
> the King remains "head of state" for Commonwealth nations, including Canada and Australia
He is separately head of state of each of those Commonwealth nations. That shows that those nations are no longer in any sense part of the empire and it places them at the same level as the UK in terms of their relationship to their monarch.
Its a legacy of empire, but not evidence of empire - rather the opposite.
"The sun never set on the British empire, an Indian nationalist later sardonically commented, because even God couldn’t trust the Englishman in the dark"
>The criminal charges stemmed from a longtime island practice of “breaking in” girls as young as 10.
> Colleen McCullough, the Australian author of The Thorn Birds and wife of a well-known Pitcairn descendant, harshly criticized the British for prosecuting what even the Foreign Office grudgingly conceded was a “cultural trait.” She said, “It’s Polynesian to break your girls in at 12.”
Colleen McCullough is less an expert on Polynesian culture and more an enabler of a randy British mutineer fork
Although archaeologists believe that Polynesians were living on Pitcairn as late as the 15th century, the islands were uninhabited when they were re-discovered by Europeans.
In 1790, nine of the mutineers from the British merchant ship HMS Bounty, along with the native Tahitian men and women who were with them (six men, 11 women, and a baby girl), settled on Pitcairn Island and set fire to the Bounty.
Tahiti is in French Polynesia. According to your quote 18/27 = 66% of the original settlers are Polynesian. It'd be very strange if they had a completely European culture.
The island is tiny. According to the article, when population roused to about 200, it led to famine. The local food supply just cannot support large population.
Depending on definition of empire I guess you could say that Britain's greatest colony, North America, is still an empire.
It's cultural exports and influences are felt all over the world and to date, all other countries still need its consideration, approval and/ or support in their own foreign policies, and that includes Britain.
