By the 1890s the British Empire ruled over a quarter of Earth’s land

Evidence

No doubt [in 1891] the population of Great Britain barely exceeded 38,000,000, but there were nearly 2,000,000 British subjects in Cape Colony and Natal, over 600,000 in New Zealand, over 3,000,000 in Australia, and 5,000,000 in Canada. Add to these figures the Indian subjects of Great Britain, almost 300,000,000, and a further 46,000,000 in the remaining territories under some form of British rule or influence and the total amounted to 394,600,000. What other State could hope to rival such a figure… . The area of the Empire was also on the increase: in September 1896, a statesman calculated that in twelve years 2,600,000 square miles had been added to it—that is to say twenty-four times the area of Great Britain. In 1895, it was 11,335,000 square miles. A few more annexations and it would amount to a quarter of the entire land surface of the globe. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1136