The series has now ended but you can still enjoy a wealth of information on the site, from the interactive timeline to historical narratives and profiles.
Enthusiastic children wave their Union Jacks on Empire Day at the High Middleton School, May 1913 (Roper/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images) View more images
After WWI, the colour coding of the globe changed.
The Ottoman empire was dismantled and the rich cultural and economic swathe that stretched from Turkey down through the Levant, Syria, Mesopotamia - what is now Iraq - Palestine, Jordan to the Persian Gulf, was no longer Turkish.
The San Remo conference confirmed the ruling of the newly formed League of Nations that Britain and France should now have an international mandate to rule this region. France administered Syria and Lebanon. Britain, Iraq, Palestine and what became Jordan. Egypt was a British protectorate.
The American President, Woodrow Wilson, had insisted on mandates rather than colonial annexation. He didn't want any of the colonial powers to expand their empires.
But anyone reading the papers in Britain, especially the Daily Express under its new owner the Canadian Max Beaverbrook, didn't really take much notice of the diplomatic nuance.
The Nawab of Pataudi would still play his cricket in England and the members at Sussex would regard him as a good chap and almost one of them. The missionary societies still sent teams all over the world to protect the Empire as a symbol of Christianity - something they had been encouraged to do by Act of Parliament for more than a century. The Black and Tans could be sent to Ireland to cruelly deal with rebels who were regarded by the British public as disloyal to the caste of imperial authority.
The British seemed more conscious than ever that 440 million people were part of the widest spread and most powerful empire the world had seen. Colonies were places from which the British could import goods at a profit and to which they could export. Globalization had started with the British Empire.
In Britain, in the 1920s and 30s this was reflected in every high street. There were hundreds of high street promotions with titles such as, Empire Shopping Week. An Empire Marketing Board, sold Empire to the people.
The message was simple: buy Empire produce and make our kith and kin and ourselves strong.
Lord Beaverbrook was born in Maple, Ontario the son of a church minister. His career began on the stock market and his fortune accrued through amalgamation of cement mills. He left for Britain in 1910 and became an MP. He was Lloyd George's Minister for Information. After WWI he bought the Daily Express and started the Sunday Express. From 1929 his newspapers promoted Empire Free Trade. Churchill became a close friend and during WWII he made Beaverbrook Minister of Supply. His biggest task was to improve aircraft production famously calling on housewives to donate their aluminium pots and pans to make planes.
The Canadian newspaper baron, Lord Beaverbrook, turned his Daily Express into the most vigorous champion of Empire ever seen in Fleet Street. Even in the 1960s, with the Empire being dismantled and Beaverbrook dead, the colonial ties remained a main feature of the Express Group then led by his son, Max Aitken. This was an important reason the Express supported Prime Minister Ian Smith when he made a Unilateral Declaration of Independence for Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) rather than hand rule to the local people.
Coulsdon Council, Surrey, had no doubts as to the value of imperial trade:
"In this empire shopping week we're out to build up by bigger trade the ability of the great Dominions to stand as the bulwarks of peace about the world. And in a like manner to build up the trade of Coulsdon and so increase local prosperity, which is as necessary to Couldson as the trade of the Dominions is to the Empire. So remember that every penny you spend in Couldson on the products of this great Commonwealth of free peoples will go to cement the bulwark which is to stand between you and the growing unrest of the world."
Sir Granville Ryrie, the high commissioner for Australia, agreed:
"The Empire Shopping Weeks that are being held in so many districts throughout the country are evidence of this enthusiasm for Empire trade, and I can imagine no better means of bringing the products of the empire before the purchasing public. Therefore the message I would send to the Coulsdon people is: buy Australian produce and help Australia to help you."
