British Empire

The British Empire was the name used by the United Kingdom during its time as a colonial power.

In the late 1830s until 1842, the Empire went to war with Afghanistan after occupying the country in a gambit to prevent Russian expansion in Central Asia from encroaching on British territory in India. After a disastrous performance from the British Army, a new army invaded Afghanistan to put an end to the war. (PROSE: Mire and Clay) Some years later, the Empire fought a second war against the Afghans. (PROSE: All-Consuming Fire)

By 1850, it was the most powerful empire in the history of Earth up to that point. (AUDIO: 1963: The Assassination Games)

In 1883, Josiah Samuel Smith hoped to take over the British Empire by having Redvers Fenn-Cooper assassinate Queen Victoria. (TV: Ghost Light)

In November 1926, anti-Empire protests took place in Burma. The tigress Dawon was captured by Lady Adela Foster in the protests. (AUDIO: The Emerald Tiger)

Yvonne Hartman of Torchwood One hoped to use alien artefacts to rebuild the British Empire, much to the Tenth Doctor's confusion. This plan was abandoned after the Torchwood Institute's "old regime" was destroyed in the Battle of Canary Wharf in 2007. (TV: Army of Ghosts) Jack Harkness, who had worked with Torchwood for over a century, reshaped the remnants of Torchwood in the Doctor's honour. (TV: The Sound of Drums)

However, the British or English Empire monicker was also used to denominate several alternate variants of the United Kingdom. For the most part, these were usually more extreme versions of the British government, totalitarian states subject to xenophobia. One of these parallels was seen exploiting and torturing a crippled version of the Sixth Doctor (AUDIO: Jubilee) and another one was briefly created by Sabbath in which the Empire was murdering key personnel essential to the development of the computer. (PROSE: The Domino Effect) These timelines, for obvious reasons, were seen by the Doctor as mockeries and were destroyed or the events leading to their creation undone.

Upon visiting Venus in the far future, Henry Gordon Jago suggested claiming the planet for Queen Victoria and the British Empire. (AUDIO: Voyage to Venus)