The table below explains when various territories entered or left the British Empire. It can be quite confusing as the borders of these territories could and did change, name changes were frequent, colonies amalgamated and combined with one another - not to mention various treaties and wars! It is very difficult to keep track of all of these changes over the course of the entire history of the empire. There were also different classifications of territories: Companies - initially private companies capitalised from Britain - tried to set up their own colonies as private commercial concerns. They frequently found the administration far more expensive than they expected and so often turned to the British government for help - particularly when wars or rebellions occurred. I have also included a few settler/missionary inspired settlements in this category. Colonies were those areas directly ruled by a governor on behalf of the British government and representing the Crown. The governor was responsible to the Colonial Office in London, although he usually had wide powers of discretion. These were the most common form of imperial control. Protectorates were territories where the local rulers could continue ruling domestically but they had ceded foreign and defence to the British. In fact, even in protectorates, British advisers frequently held influence far beyond foreign and defence fields. Dominions were those colonies that were granted significant freedom to rule themselves. The settler colonies were afforded this freedom. Dominions were fully independent countries after the 1931 Statute of Westminster, although their Head of State continued to be the British sovereign. I have included some other examples of self-governing colonies in this category. Mandates were set up after World War One as German and Turkish colonies were passed to Britain and France to prepare for self government on behalf of the League of Nations. Then, after World War Two, the United Nations issued its own mandates. You can gauge the relative size, population and economic effectiveness of the varying colonies in 1924 by looking at this table. The British Empire Colonies interactive map was made by Darren Chalk using data from this website.