By the end of the eighteenth century, Europeans had built considerable overseas empires. Britain, in particular, stood out, controlling vast territories in both Asia and the Americas. As Britain’s empire grew, and the British and colonial economies grew ever more entwined, some British observers began to question the morality of unrestrained exploitation of non-Europeans. The emergence of the antislavery movement in the late eighteenth century is, perhaps, the most notable example of this trend. More broadly, many in Britain came to believe that the British Empire could be sustained only if it operated according to “British values.”