In 1996 it lost 7% of its rodents after viral infections contaminated some of its colonies.
In America, it created fears that Britain might try to abolish slavery in its colonies.
The crisis exploded Britain's lingering imperial pretensions, and hastened the independence of its colonies.
The first had been in 1898, against Spain, whose remaining empire was crumbling in the face of popular revolts in two of its colonies, Cuba and the Philippines.
In 1752, Britain and its colonies adopted the Gregorian calendar.
Under bilateral accords, France's military provides logistical and intelligence support to some of its former colonies in Africa.
Furthermore, France has to take into account the importance of migrants related to its former colonies.
Russia has not corralled its former colonies back into line with Elysian visions of a dreamy future.
Paris has always regarded its former colonies - particularly in Africa - as offshore extensions of metropolitan France.
Another old imperial power, France, is also hoping to make the most of its residual colonies, and in doing so is antagonising friends.
Miletus greatly surpassed all of the other Ionian cities in its maritime ventures and commerce, founding its first colonies in the eighth century B.
Spain has long sought to curb immigration from its former colonies.
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The Anglosphere is not the only great European cultural block: Mr Ghemawat calculates that by some measures Spain's ties with its old colonies are even closer than Britain's.
However, many of these benefits have diminished in the 30 years since Britain joined the predecessor to the EU. One of the EU's main purposes is to be a regional free-trade zone, and Britain is now prohibited from granting its former colonies special privileges.
The hostage crisis in Algeria is a "terrible warning" that the conflict in Mali "is not a matter between France and one of its former colonies in West Africa" but "a sign of the growing destabilization of the whole Sahel region, " the paper says.
This concerns Britain's treatment of its few remaining colonies or dependent territories, as it prefers to call them.
There is a rapport and even a sense of shared culture that Britain, for one, does not enjoy with any of its former African colonies.
Some 40-50 years after emigrants from its north African colonies stepped off the boat in Marseille, there is no hyphenated term for their French-born children or grandchildren.
The Colonial Office probably feels that its activity in preparing colonies for independence makes any immediate merger almost impossible.
America isn't a country united by ethnicity the way, say, Japan is, the way France used to be before immigrants from former colonies made its population more diverse.
American proponents of imperialism argued that the country needed colonies to bolster its military power and to find markets for its capital, but they also believed that by expanding overseas, the United States was fulfilling its historic mission to transform the world in its image.
There are any number of reasons America emerged from its humble beginnings as a cluster of colonies to become the most prosperous, most powerful nation on earth.
Yet again, this 54-member organisation - mainly former British colonies - is confronting divisions in its ranks on human rights.
Its colonial history is surely part of the answer, but colonies existed elsewhere.
The United Nations does not list them as colonies because they were settled long before Morocco existed in its present shape.
Thursday saw many of the fans visiting vineyards in the Martinborough area, famous for its pinot noir output, and several coaches heading east to view seal colonies and the rugged coastline.
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The jury soon became standard in criminal and civil cases at common law, and its use spread with the British empire, nowhere more so than in the American colonies.
And while there was a strong abolitionist movement in England, it was the Industrial Revolution, and its mechanization that did away with the need for vast amounts of cheap labor in the colonies, that eventually turned England against the slave trade.
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There were a few agricultural colonies on the higher ground, such as Ta'if, which supplied Mecca with most of its food, and Yathrib, some 250 miles to the north.
Its central and perennially popular Stanley Park is one of North America's largest urban parks, graced with colonies of curious racoons and stunning views out to the snow-capped North Shore mountains.
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