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A study of British maritime and imperial expansion in the Indian and Pacific Oceans in the second half of the eighteenth century. Globalisation began a great deal earlier than most people realise. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Britain sought to establish genuinely global trade for the first time in history. The Global Reach of Empire is a study of British maritime and imperial expansion in the Indian and Pacific oceans in the second half of the eighteenth century. It explores seaborne discovery, strategy in wartime, and the infrastructure necessary to support far-flung maritime activity, colonization and trade. This was the first time in human history that there was sufficient knowledge of the world available for people to conceive of it as a whole--and a group of British politicians did so with the purpose of creating a trans-Pacific trading empire. Alan Frost places the colonisation of Australia in a broad context and shows its relationship to other imperial strategies of the period. Based on twenty-five years' research in archives around the world, The Global Reach of Empire offers new perspectives on Pacific exploration, war, imperial planning and the beginnings of modern Australia. It also examines the reasons behind the colonization of Australia, and shows the historical origins of the contemporary idea that the Pacific Rim countries will become the twenty-first century's most important economic area.