Great Britain also held Newfoundland, as well as those maritime provinces which have since become federated as part of the Dominion.
In South America she possessed British Guiana, and for a period, as related above, French Guiana also.
In the West Indies, in 1800, her flag flew over the entire crescent of the Windward and Leeward groups from Granada to the Virgins; she was mistress of Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica, the "still vexd" Bermudas and the whole bunch of the Bahamas; and she had interests in San Domingo. At the Peace of Amiens she retained only Trinidad of the islands captured during the war; and she presented no very stubborn resistance to the negro revolt that lost her any further control over the largest of the sugar islands.
She had the Cape of Good Hope in her custody in 1800, but weakly allowed it to be bartered away by diplomacy at Amiens; only, however, to reassert her power there six years later, when it became at length apparent to British statesmen--as it surely should have been obvious to them throughout--that Australia and India could not be secure while the chief southern harbour of Africa was in foreign possession.
Ceylon was retained as a sparkling jewel for the British crown when so much that had been won in fair fight was allowed to slip away. The capture of Java (1811) and its restoration to the Dutch belong to a later period; whilst the growth of British power in India scarcely falls within the scope of a brief review of the colonial situation, though of great importance in its effects.
Malta, which has usually been classed as a colony, though its principal value is rather strategic than colonial, was occupied by the British in September 1800, and the cat-footed efforts of Napoleonic diplomacy to get her out of the island made it a storm centre in European politics in these fiery years. Out she would not come, and did not. Neither Tzar nor Emperor could get her out, by plot or by arms; and there she still remains.
The position of the British in the South Seas demands special consideration, as being immediately related to our subject. In 1800 the only part of Australasia occupied by white people was Norfolk Island and the small area at Port Jackson shut in between the sea and a precipitous range of mountains that for thirteen years to come presented an unconquerable barrier to inland exploration, despite repeated endeavours to find a way across them. The settlement had spread only a few miles beyond the spot where Governor Arthur Phillip had resolved to locate his First Fleet company twelve years before. As yet no attempt had been made to occupy Tasmania, which had been determined to be an island only two years previously. New Zealand also was virgin ground for the European colonist. The Maori had it all to himself.