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On 1 July 1997, Britain handed Hong Kong back to China after 156 years of colonial rule, closing the last major open account from the Opium Wars. Deng Xiaoping designed the deal but died four months before the flag came down, and the fifty-year promise he made has been fraying ever since.
On 28 June 1838, a nineteen-year-old queen was crowned at Westminster Abbey in a ceremony generally agreed to be a shambles. The Archbishop put the ring on the wrong finger. An 82-year-old lord fell down the altar steps. The reign that followed lasted sixty-three years and built an empire.
On 10 February 1763, the Treaty of Paris ended the Seven Years' War. France traded a continent for a sugar island, Britain collected an empire, and the bills came due within a generation.
On 2 February 1626, Charles I was crowned at Westminster Abbey. His reign ended on a scaffold — and began the slow, violent invention of parliamentary democracy.
On 11 January 1879, Lord Chelmsford crossed the Buffalo River and the Anglo-Zulu War began. The British are easy villains in this story - and mostly deserve to be. But the story starts sixty years earlier, when the Zulu were doing the crushing themselves.
On 3rd January 1833, Captain James Onslow sailed HMS Clio into Port Louis and told the Argentine commander to take down his flag and leave. It was not the first time someone had done this, and it would not be the last.