Losing an Empire? Not a problem if you’re the world power Britain was in the late eighteenth century. You just have to build a new one.

In part that would come from new journeys of so-called discovery (the people in the ‘discovered’ lands didn’t think they’d been undiscovered before the Europeans showed up). The most famous of the British explorers was Captain James Cook, whose sad end showed that the process didn’t always run smoothly.

But the biggest contribution to the new Empire would come from land Britain already held, specifically in India. There, though, its power wasn’t exerted directly, but had been outsourced to the East India Company. Which led to a host of problems. A number of people tried to solve them, including Edmund Burke who attempted to impeach the Company’s first Governor General in India, Warren Hastings. But no one spoke out more forcefully for India than the MP George Dempster, who went so far as to argue for its independence.

Sadly, no one was listening.

Illustration: Thunder, lightning and smoke published by William Moore and by W. Dickie, hand-coloured etching, 22 April 1783

National Portrait Gallery D15004. Burke and Fox float overhead with impeachment as their weapon. Lord North, beaten in North America, now lost, lies in rags on the left. In the centre is Charles Francis MP, who tried to get parliamentary control over Warren Hastings, on the right, who’s rebuilding the British Empire, but this time in India. And in his own, or the East India Company's, way.

Music: Bach Partita #2c by J Bu licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License