The historiography of the British Empire refers to the studies, sources, critical methods and interpretations used by scholars to study the history of the British Empire. Scholars have long studied the Empire, looking at the causes for its formation, its relations to the French and other empires, and the kinds of people and their ideas who became imperialists or anti-imperialists. The history of the breakdown of the Empire has attracted scholars of the United States (which broke away in 1776), as well as India (independent in 1947) and the African colonies (independent in the 1960s). Darwin (2013) identifies four imperial goals: colonizing, civilizing, converting, and commerce. In the First British Empire (before 1780s) there was no single imperial vision, but rather a multiplicity of priv