Trade & global routes

An editorial selection for comparing processes, events, and lives. The interval and counts describe selected records, not the historical boundaries or importance of the subject.

Canonical records: 63
Events: 27
People: 4
Processes and periods: 32

Compare in the atlas Selection criteria and limits

Topics represented

British Empire (32) · Companies, trade & extraction (23) · Trade & global routes (20) · Colonization & sovereignty (15) · Slavery & coerced labor (12) · Law & imperial government (11) · Oceans, navigation & cartography (11) · Empire, trade & power (8) · Resistance & colonized agency (8) · Ocean navigation (7) · War & conquest (6) · Nautical cartography (5)

View distribution by region and period

Canonical records by regional label and start date. These are numerical analysis bins, not universal historical periods. A multi-region record appears in multiple rows; do not add rows as a unique-record total.
Region	Before 3000 BCE	3000–1 BCE	1–1499	1500–1799	1800–1899	1900–1999	Since 2000
Africa	0	4	10	9	6	2	0
Americas	0	1	1	14	1	1	0
Asia	2	7	11	8	3	5	0
Europe	1	4	6	13	2	1	1
Oceania	0	1	0	0	0	1	0
Global / no specific region	0	0	0	2	2	1	0

Records and sources

Ordered by start date. Long lives and processes may begin before the period you want to study.

1947–1974
The sterling area and its guarantees prolong an imperial financial network
After the Second World War, the sterling area grouped territories and states that held reserves in pounds and applied exchange controls coordinated around London. The 1947 convertibility crisis, devaluations and the 1968 guarantee agreements show that constitutional independence did not immediately end monetary dependence or the Bank of England’s centrality. The official archive records renewals and short extensions until the guarantees ended in December 1974; this does not imply that every exchange control ended at that point
1956
Nationalization and invasion expose British decline
Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal company; Britain, France, and Israel coordinated an invasion under a secret pretext. Pressure from the United States, United Nations, and financial markets forced withdrawal. Egypt kept the canal, and the crisis discredited Britain’s capacity to act as an autonomous imperial power
2026
A treaty regulates Gibraltar’s border after Brexit
The United Kingdom and European Union signed a treaty on 14 July to facilitate movement of people and goods between Gibraltar and Spain, provisionally applied from the next day. It preserves the UK’s and Spain’s opposing sovereignty positions and has the backing of Gibraltar’s government and Parliament; it does not settle the territorial dispute