At its peak in the early twentieth century, the British Empire was one of the largest empires in global history, with colonies spanning across all continents. However, when The Tempest was first performed in 1611, the English had only just begun to take steps towards establishing what would become this infamous empire.

By the time Shakespeare started writing and putting on plays, Elizabeth I had for some time already been endorsing the travels of several English explorers who ventured to Africa and the Americas in search of economic opportunities. They were especially looking for attractive land and for people who could be put to work on them as labourers. This included the merchant John Hawkins whose journey to West Africa in 1562-3 in search of people to enslave and trade was so successful that Elizabeth I partly sponsored his later enslaving expeditions in the same decade. Not long after, the Queen also gave her statesman Walter Raleigh permission to explore and colonise any lands that were not ruled by Christian leaders, which Raleigh acted on in the 1580s by trying to set up an English colony off the coast of present day North Carolina.

The Queen was following the trends of other European superpowers like the Spanish and the Portuguese, who had already been growing their empires through similar means. Building on Elizabeth’s projects, her successor James I instituted the colony of Virginia in North America in 1606, and the English began to settle there in 1607.

Many believe that The Tempest  was inspired by a historical shipwreck which occurred in 1609, when a vessel called the ‘Sea Venture’ that was on its way to Virginia, with supplies to support the English settlers there, was caught in a hurricane. The storm caused the crew to be stranded on Bermuda, and the story of their survival made great waves back in England.

When Prospero asks Ariel about the aftermath of the storm in the second scene of The Tempest, Ariel informs his master that the ship is ‘hid’ in the ‘still-vexed Bermudas’ (1.2.229). The airy spirit’s reference to this region makes the play’s connection to the 1609 shipwreck seem likely. This links The Tempest to some of the very first colonial activities that would result in the establishment of the British Empire.

Given this historical backdrop, it is not surprising that the play deals in many different ways with ideas around imperial power, and more particularly with dynamics that are relevant to the history of the British Empire.

The events of the play are framed by desires and contests for national, economic, and political power, which were also central to Britain’s imperial motivations.

Prospero entraps his enemies on the island to take revenge for their ‘foul play’ (1.2.62) in pushing him out of his position as the Duke of Milan. It was particularly Prospero’s brother Antonio, whose ‘ambition growing’ (1.2.105) led him to work with the King of Naples to expel Prospero from his Dukedom.

The King of Naples himself is shown to be strategic about the alliances he makes to secure his wealth and power. When Prospero unleashes the tempest on his enemies, they are on their way back from ‘the marriage of/the King’s fair daughter Claribel to the King of Tunis’ in ‘Africa’ (2.1.72-73). ‘Tunis’ (modern-day Tunisia) in North Africa  was at the time a domain of the economically and culturally rich Muslim, Turkish Ottoman Empire.

Many European nations had sought to establish good ties with the Ottomans, including the English under the reign of Elizabeth I. So Shakespeare’s audiences would have understood that the marriage of Claribel to the King of Tunis would have been very desirable for the European King of Naples, especially for the trade and diplomatic advantages it could offer.

Prospero not only succeeds in his plans for revenge as he confuses and humiliates his enemies, but also brings together his daughter Miranda and Ferdinand, the prince of Naples. Their marriage ensures that his grandchildren will be royals and that he will be guaranteed a position of political power greater than the one he previously held. As his friend Gonzalo comments at the end of the play, Prospero was ‘thrust from Milan’ so that his issue’, or his descendents, ‘Should become kings of Naples’ (5.1.205-6).

But the dynamics of the British Empire itself are most vividly conveyed in Shakespeare’s representation of Prospero as a colonial settler, who unjustly occupies land and forces its people into enslavement.

After he is expelled from Milan, Prospero arrives on the island and decides to settle there. He then asserts himself as ‘lord’ (5.1.162) of the island and uses his powers to enslave its native inhabitants for his ‘profit’ (1.2.314). These include the spirits, like Ariel, and the Algerian-descended Caliban who was born on the island.

Prospero treats his labourers with violence and unkindness to keep them working for him. He repeatedly insults Caliban in the play, by calling him a ‘devil’ (1.2.320), a ‘poisonous slave’ (1.2.320) and ‘malice’ (1.2.368). He also instructs the spirits to abuse him with ‘stinging’ pinches (1.2.330). Similarly, when Ariel asks his master for the freedom he was promised after giving him ‘worthy service’ (1.2.246), Prospero tells him to be grateful for his job, and threatens that if Ariel continues to complain he will ‘peg’  the spirit in ‘an oak’ tree until he ‘hast howled away twelve winters’ (1.2.294-6).

The former Duke also tries to justify his actions by insisting that the island’s inhabitants are inferior to him. We see this especially in the racist language he uses to debase Caliban, who he refers to several times throughout the play as a human who is monstrous, ‘savage’, and like a dog.

These colonial practices went hand in hand with the expansion of the British Empire, and in Shakespeare’s time, the English had already started to undertake these acts in pursuit of empire. In Virginia, for example, the English were occupying lands that belonged to the Indigenous American tribes of the Powhatan confederacy, and before long they brought groups of Africans across the Atlantic ocean to work for them in this colony.

With all the treachery and injustice that the play associates with imperial power and the creation of an empire, it’s no wonder that kindly Gonzalo dreams of a ‘commonwealth’ (2.1.149)  where there is ‘no kind of traffic’ or trade (2.1.150), no ‘service’ (2.1.153), ‘No sovereignty’  (2.1.158), no ‘treason, felony’ (2.1.162) or even any weapons  – just people living together in  harmony and relying on ‘nature’ (2.1.164) for their sustenance.

The theme of imperial injustice runs so deep in the play that when the British Empire and its European counterparts started to collapse in the middle of the last century following the widespread opposition it faced from its colonies, many anti-colonial writers and thinkers from these regions used The Tempest in their expressions of resistance. They especially turned to Caliban to speak to the unfair experiences of those who had been living under imperial regimes. Perhaps most famously, the Martinique poet and politician Aimé Césaire responsed to The Tempest by retelling it in his own play Une Tempête (1969) or ‘A Tempest’, which was set in the Caribbean. Césaire recategorised Prospero as a White master, Ariel as a mixed-race ‘slave’, and Caliban as a Black ‘slave’ who is desirous for revolution.

Shakespeare’s Caliban is a fitting icon for this work, since the character does not passively give in to Prospero’s colonial-style domination but holds out against it. ‘This island’s mine […] Which thou tak’st from me’ (1.2.332-3), he reminds Prospero, and declares that he was his ‘own king’ (1.2. 343) before the settler came along. Caliban also looks for opportunities out of his oppressed condition, and when he thinks he sees one in Trinculo and Stephano, he does not hesitate to take it.

Shakespeare’s play is not only valuable for allowing us to consider the aims behind the  British Empire and the atrocities it committed in its long history. As post-empire engagements with the play show us, The Tempest also has the potential to confront past injustice and to look towards an equitable future.