This antique race-type board game, dating from the early days of manned flight, would have originally been boxed, with three coloured aeroplanes on stands and wooden shaker with bone dice (all missing). 
It comprises a screen-printed cardboard board game, with central fold. The title, "Aeroplane Race Round the British Empire", is at the top and the board features illustrated images of cites and countries of the British Empire, including Honk Kong, Melbourne, New Zealand, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Egypt, Cape Town, Malta, West Indies, Ottawa, Gibraltar and London, showing the expanse of the Empire. There are 100 spaces, with a number of forfeits en-route to the end, including running out of petrol, motor break down, a gale or colliding with another aeroplane as well as a number of bonuses such as fair weather or good wind.  British Manufacture is printed to the bottom of the board. 

The game reflects idealised images of British overseas possessions and project a sense of order in the Empire when it was felt that innovations such as telegraph, radio and aeroplane would strengthen links across the colonies. Glevum Games was the principal trade name used by a firm established in Gloucester in 1894 by Harry Owen Roberts and his younger brother John Owen Roberts. Roberts Brothers manufactured a vast range of products at their factory in Upton Street, Gloucester. The factory was built in 1902 and provided a state-of-the-art workplace for the workforce of up to about 700 employees. Government inspectors referred other employers to the factory to see how they could improve working conditions for their employees. The company became known for its range of games and was the largest maker of games in the British Empire.  Glevum Games was taken over by Chad Valley in 1954, but remained in business until 1956 when the factory was closed. The British Empire emerged in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries through overseas trade, settlement, and rivalry with other European powers, expanding first in North America and the Caribbean and later in Asia via the East India Company. 

During the eighteenth-century Britain became the world’s leading imperial power, building a global trading system closely tied to the enslavement and exploitation of Indigenous peoples, and winning decisive victories over France, though the loss of the American colonies forced a shift in focus toward India and the wider world. 
In the nineteenth century, industrialisation underpinned rapid expansion, with Britain establishing control over India, large parts of Africa, and territories in Asia and the Pacific, promoting ideas of free trade and a “civilising mission” while ruling diverse peoples through unequal and often coercive systems. The people colonised by the British had British laws and customs imposed upon them, lost their ability to govern themselves and were, in many cases, violently oppressed. Taxes on colonised people were often high and the British brutally exploited natural resources for their own financial gain. 

The British Empire stripped many colonies and indigenous peoples of their land, languages and vibrant cultures, and along with harsh conditions and disease, saw decline in Indigenous populations, (e.g. the Aboriginal population had declined by 90% by the 1920s). There was opposition to the transatlantic slave trade in Britain during the 1700s and 1800s. This came from members of parliament, like William Wilberforce, as well as religious organisations, such as the Quakers. Olaudah Equiano, a formerly-enslaved man who settled in London, campaigned against slavery and published an autobiography detailing his experiences of enslavement. At its height after the First World War, the empire governed roughly a quarter of the world’s population, ruling over 10 million square miles of territory and controlling 400 million people. 

By the time of the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, Britain controlled a worldwide empire which covered a fifth of the land in the world but the economic strain of two world wars and the rise of nationalist movements led to rapid decolonisation after 1945, most notably with Indian independence in 1947. The empire formally gave way to the Commonwealth, leaving a complex legacy that includes the global spread of the English language and British institutions alongside deep social, political, and economic inequalities in former colonies.