I’m sure someone has mentioned it in comments, but to paraphrase, to Americans your Independence Day was THE defining moment of your history. To Britain it was a Tuesday
I have an alternate theory: The England football team has in fact been playing international matches for many centuries. Every time the England team lost (which often happened!) the hooligan supporters beat the crap out of the local population and never got around to going home.
What Americans don't realise is that in 1776 they only fought off a small percentage of the British. Had the British sent the full navy it would have been a very different story. Let's not forget that the British were also fighting the French and the Spanish at the same time all over the globe
Britain did blockade Brazil for a time in an effort to stop slave traders but you are right. England has the oldest standing alliance with Portugal in the history of the planet.
@@Tolrem-uh2ee We were supposed to blockade it but with only 5 ships initially and increased to 10 later according to a documentary on slavery that I watched the other day so wasn't very effective
This video gives a big clue why Britain didn't send reinforcements during the revolutionary war. Despite Americans believing that war was the most important war ever the British army had bigger fish to fry mainly a global conflict with the two largest empire's who were funding and training the ungrateful traitors who'd caused the war which necessitated a rise in trade tariffs.
To give you an idea of how ridiculous our influence has been: There are currently 7.8 billion people in the world 2.6 billion of them live in the Commonwealth (ie nations that were once part of the British Empire), and that doesn't count the 400 million or so in the US, let alone the ones we invaded but never ruled in Europe. So if we count the US, effectively 38% of the current population of the world live in countries that once had our King or Queen as head of state. And you could fit the whole of Britain nearly four times into Texas. Mind-blowing really.
You have to understand our makeup, we are a genetic mixture of Ancient Britons( Celts, Picts), Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans. All of these were warriors, and mix them together, it may also explain why we like a drink or two. Our arch enemies the French used to say, wherever we go in this world, wherever there is enough water to sail a ship, we are sure find the british there waiting for us!! 🇬🇧👍
I blame the Danes and the Norwegians, especially the Danes. When they came calling in England they rowed across the sea, found a handy river, and kept on going; that's how we learned to navigate. Then they "married" a few local girls and as a result a whole bunch of us - well, pretty much all of us - have Viking blood, and once that stuff gets into your veins all you can do is go wandering. However, if you live on a small island the only places you can wander to will be a) overseas and b) already occupied by other people, which poses a small problem until you point to the guns on your ships being larger than their pea-shooters; at that point they usually say "Oh, oops, please come in." In fact, if you look at those maps again, you'll see that there are only a few large areas of the world we didn't get to. Firstly, as well as the Sahara and Saudi Arabia, there are other great deserts, like the Gobi. I think someone went for a daytrip once, realised there were no large rivers, and went home again. Same goes for the Atacama, where it never rains at all; if there's no rain there's no water, and if there's no water, bang goes having a cuppa. And secondly, we never went where the Portuguese were there already. The English/Portuguese alliance is the oldest and longest in the world so we didn't touch Brazil or the other, mainly small, areas they got to first. It's a global example of honour amongst thieves. 😁
The saying used to go ' The Sun never sets on the British Empire' , because between the 18th and 20th centuries we had some land or countries under our control where ever the sun was at any time. At its peak, the British empire covered a quarter of the Earth's surface.
I offer no apologies. The sun never set on the British Empire. Britain gave much more than it took, including the rule of law, the end to slavery and the industrial revolution which began the road to the technologies we take for granted.
No, the "British Empire" didn't give more than it took, that's just how all imperialists try to justify their excesses of racism, exploitation and slavery - which Britain was fully involved in!
From being basically barbarians on a tiny island at the edge of the world we didn't do so bad... Bit hard on the folk we gave a kicking to though And hey guys, we won the final round 1812 etc. You lot sued for peace ☮️
The power of innovation in transport and warfare, good organisation, discipline. The same things that saw the Roman empire be so successful in its day.
You didn't really "kick our butts". Yes we were made to retreat but we were fighting on several fronts AND you had help from the French .(LaFayette all that lot)and some indigenous people (last of the Mohicans gives insight into that), and America (US) at that time was only the 13 colonies(mainly farmland and wide open spaces) it was nothing like the powerhouse America (US) is today. Maybe if we had realised how powerful America (US) was to become we would have paid more attention.
Don't forget, the US sued for peace because they where worried the Brirish would take the US more seriously. Kicked our butt's??? That definitely didn't happen, that's what is taught in US schools
not just the French either, Spain and the Netherlands joined in a fair bit too, so basically they needed THREE other European powers to help them beat us...
As a British person, watching you guys react to this video fills me with shame. On behalf of all British people I whole heartily apologise for all the countries we missed :(
Some we 'discovered' and were the first to colonise - like the USA and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, etc. You have to remember that at it's height the race to discover and control the world was between England (not a Union at the time), Spain, France, Portugal and the Netherlands. And what everyone conveniently forgets is (1) England was itself invaded many times before William the Conqueror in 1066, and (2) every country we colonised benefited from it and the majority were given independence when they asked for it - not all of course as you can testify to! BUT your Constitution and Bill of Rights was based on the English Magna Carta written in 1215!!! Do remind me guys, which country has the USA conquered single-handedly???? There has NEVER been another Empire that at one time controlled A QUARTER of the known world.
I realise you said England above, but it was the Scots who were the driving force of the Empire. You are banging on about Wiliam the conquerer, yet ignoring what made the Empire, what made the Empire was the modern creation of education which was in Scotland at the time. Take people like Thomas Blake Glover who created modern Japan. Scots and Scottish education and inventions made the Empire, not the English and william the conquerer ffs. That was 1000 years too late. 22 signatories to the declaration of independence were Scots and it was based on the declaration of Arbroath, not the Magna Carta
@@OneTrueScotsman: What truly made the map red, signifying ownership, annexation, proper influence - and not just flags signifying wars - was the Industrial revolution. That was very much a joint effort, and Scotland's influence was much larger than 8%. Just look up any list of Scottish inventions from that era and on.
@@OneTrueScotsman The Empire had fuck all to do with parliament and representation. It was built on technology, education and modern thinking. The Empire was built on trade and companies that were created at the time, so you mentioning parliamentary percentage is laughable to be honest. The countries Scotland invaded also had nothing to do with it. Scotland on it's own was never gonna dominate. We did need the British Navy at the time to help and we were part of that. However Scotland did make the Empire, history and looking at inventions at the time and looking at key people at the time shows us. There is a great book called how Scots created the modern world
Quite a few of these are where we were invited in or where our assets of other territories were attacked or threatened first, or where we threw out other invaders. You could say we did a lot of this map by accident
Oh the irony...called to India for a cup of tea was it ..after going to Dinner in Ireland, starving 1million scattering another million to the 4 corners many dying on route in the coffin ships...easier then spending rest of lives in servitude ...than back to eat all of India's food too .killing many more millions ....what a fantastic people and soo proud of this..
At its height in 1922, it was the largest empire the world had ever seen, covering around a quarter of Earth’s land surface and ruling over 458 million people.
The British Empire evolved out of the need to Trade, and to protect that Trade from rivals: the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Belgiums, and French. Unlike some of those other empires, it was not created for reasons of national prestige or race supremacy. It was sole and simply, an Empire of Trade, in goods and services. It created the Global Economic Stem we have today in the world, and the major institution which support it. This is why the English language in the international language, of business, science, communications, and maritime law. Having over centuries established all of these Trading Relationship, this is also the reason why the UK was able to give up the British Empire, and convert it to the Commonwealth of Nations. Maintaining those relationships, to this day. Other empires, build instead on national prestige or race supremacy (like the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Belgiums, and French), have been unsuccessful in doing the same. The majority of them have very bad relationships with their former colonies.
You also need to bear in mind that in 1776, Britain was at war with France, Spain and on-and-off the Dutch AT THE SAME TIME. Without the MASSIVE assistance of the French, the US Revolutionary War would have been an easy win for the British Empire. Britain was simply spread too thinly and had to make some hard choices: fight the insurrection in the colonies or risk an invasion at home and the potential loss of very lucrative assets elsewhere in the empire. Based on the fact that following the decision to abandon the fight in the colonies, soundly defeating the French, Spanish AND Dutch, as well as pushing back an American invasion of Canada in 1815 (even burning down the Whitehouse and eating the US President's dinner at his own dining table) it seems like a pretty sound decision. As for WHY, the best comment I've ever heard was: "Britain invaded the entire world in search of spices only to discover they didn't like any of them." :) The story of TEA is actually REALLY fascinating and still a point of great consternation to the Chinese who consider what happened to be, essentially, corporate espionage. Look up the story of the Scottish botanist, Robert Fortune and how he essentially stole the secrets of cultivating tea from China.
While you are basically correct, I must note that the French officially declared war in 1779, though in truth had been _de facto_ heavily supportive of the American cause in a rather underhanded way for a while longer. Saratoga convinced them to get their hands and boots dirty themselves. They were nominally signatories of the Treaty of Paris 1763, in which France did cede many territories to Britain, in the defeat of France. It was something which the French Monarchy was not very happy about to say the least. Ironically, King Louis XV was almost singularly disinterested in the Americas, as he and his wife were _far_ more interested and concerned with events on the mainland of continental Europe, especially to the East of France (where powerful enemies of the French were fighting them actively on different war fronts) The British were clearly not on good terms with the French after such a massive scale of conflict that doubled British national debt during the Seven Years War. The absolute very last thing they wanted, was another globe-spanning war which required them to thinly spread their forces and spend exorbitant amounts of money to keep it going. And yet, that is basically what happened, as the French (and Spanish) got heavily-involved. As you say, the Dutch, too (often overlooked or dismissed, though very easily one of the most powerful naval forces of the late 18th century; and while the British and Dutch did clash here and there, the majority of the problem the Dutch presented, was forcing Britain to allocate more ships and crews elsewhere, _in case_ the Dutch decided to be cheeky over here or over there etc) Another very regularly overlooked faction fighting the British, were the Mysoreans of the Sultanate of Mysore. The fact that Tipu Sultan had at his disposal, something in the order of 50,000-60,000 warriors, pointed at British lines in what is now Southern India, is not exactly something which should be overlooked. Nor the fact, that the French and British both had lots of native sepoys and both fought with naval elements in serious naval battles, just as they already had in India for years, in the again, largely forgotten Carnatic Wars. Un-ironically the last direct engagement/action of the timeline of the various interwoven conflicts, ending in 1783, was the Siege of Cuddalore. In what is now India. This capped off the Second Anglo-Mysore War (as part of the various conflicts the British were engaged in simultaneously around the world) It was an inconclusive siege, largely because the news of the peace treaty and cessation of hostilities had been brought to light) only just arrived (the Treaty of Paris 1783, which was largely _unkind_ to the British at their expense, much the opposite of the Treaty of Paris 1763) The Treaty of Aranjuez 1779 between France and Spain, planned for greater military cooperation between the two members of the House of Bourbon Dynasty, of Absolute Royalists; against Britain, having difficulties dealing with what was, in truth, a British affair of a British civil war. Royalist France and Spain gave not one hoot about American 'liberty'. That was all just a crock of BS. They really just wanted revenge, pure and simple. And all else was vanity and lies. The very fact that Royalist France directly became bankrupted in that exertion and ordeal, for the sake of getting their own back against Britain, should show us all just how spiteful the French Monarchy truly was. It would basically begin the countdown to it's own destruction out of it's own venomous hatred for the British - and ironically enough, the French people themselves would rise up and destroy the French Monarchy a decade or so after the American War of Independence. Kind of a gigantic backfire. Sure, plenty of French people were already sick of their corrupt system and horrible absolute monarchy, though there were _plenty more_ totally loyal to that faction, never forget that. It will often be downplayed now with some classic, salty French historical revisionism sprinkled on it, though in truth, a huge number of French loyalists would have been around during the American War of Independence. Lafayette may not have been so inclined, true enough, though he was a young lad and looked up to George Washington (a literal former British officer) as a father figure. It went far beyond just a matter of being inspired by his colleague. It was like he was the son Washington never had, in no uncertain terms. French Royalist propaganda against the British was, like the Spanish equivalent, so intense in that time, that it persisted even beyond the destruction of the French monarchy itself. The French Revolutionaries and Republicans were more than happy to continue their toxic hostility towards the British. Again, the British will often get blamed for that (just a form of historical gaslighting that goes on constantly it really is mental) as though the French were innocent cherubs with absolutely nothing wrong with their own attitudes to the British. The French had been rivals with the English for centuries, and then, as now, it was common to default to Anglophobia. For instance, if a French President is about to go into an election campaign season, he'll typically leave the French capital and tour coastal towns and drum up anti-British rhetoric about fishing rights (even though French ships have literally been given _far_ too much leeway in British territorial waters, by EU policies in the recent past, and allowed to basically - in my view, F the EU - steal British fish stocks and scallops too btw) France even threatened to sadistically cut off Jersey's power supplies over this issue. France can often resort to just wheeling out the Anglophobic political diatribe if they think it will win votes - then guess what the President or other senior politician does? They return to Paris, continuing to pretend they care about the French fishermen after riling them up to win their votes. Classic French political behaviour. And that is _modern France_ of the Fifth French Republic (yes, their fifth) and modern France of NATO membership, fellow founding member of NATO status, allegedly allied, Entente Cordiale historically allied France. Now imagine what Royalist France was saying about the British (and sure, we gave it _right back_ for sure, as so we should have in my view) What is often forgotten is that the French were on the cusp of trying to strong-arm half of Europe in the time of Louis XIV 'the Sun King', and persistent resilience and defiance by England/Britain, put a huge dampener on the ferocity of France expansionism in the early 18th century. The likes of the 1st Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill (Winston's ancestor), denied the French full-hegemonic dominion of Europe, and defended the members of the Grand Alliance against the French Royalists and their allies. The French had great generals and so did England and it's allies. There were many severely overlooked and oft now forgotten battles, which made sure France's power was checked on the mainland. And naturally, the French never really forgave us for it. Point being, that England/Britain went from a popular hero of Europe standing up to the big bully, France, and helping many allies, to being painted as a villain by France (successfully) for decades, with French hypocrisy hitting as yet unseen levels. Then, by the Napoleonic Wars, Britain was the hero again bankrolling begging European factions desperate for capital to stay in the fight. Britain was the provider. Britain was grand-daddy lend lease in the Napoleonic Wars and Coalitions. Yes, the coalitions kept failing (5 out of 7 times) though it was British investment - again basically doubling British national debt at that time, on top of already high national debt because of numerous other wars - but the end result was to defeat Napoleon (twice, strategically in the last two coalitions) and to stop that iteration of a highly autocratic and tyrannical France. Revisionists and Napoleon lovers are basically determined to try and pretend he wasn't as bad as 'British propaganda said', but then they go quiet when you mention how Napoleonic Paris went from having ~64 newspapers to 4 regime controlled ones. Funny that, eh? Britain was routinely going to get vilified by first France, then Russia, then Germany. To the point that by the Boer Wars, the French and Germans twisted a lot of public opinion against Britain on the continent, calling the British 'brutes'. Sound familiar? Sound a bit like the Franco-German narratives coming out of the EU against Brexit Britain? Well that is because they are familiar for a good reason; because the very same Anglophobia has been entrenched in Europe for centuries but nobody can usually be bothered to acknowledge it. It's apparently 'alright if they do it'.
P.S - The USA technically invaded Canada 10 times in that war, across 3 years of campaigns, in three main campaign seasons. All failed. Largely due to British allies like the Canadiens/Canadians (depending on whether Francophone or Anglophone) and the First Nations League of Tribes like the Iroquois. Britain had
@@craigkennett6226 they were, but at some point they realized that losing 13 colonies was not nearly as important as dealing with france, dutch, and spain
We couldn't defeat Nepal. They are true warriors who have immense discipline and courage. The terrain didn't make it any easier. We now have the honour to serve alongside these famous warriors AKA the Gurkhas. In the words of Al Murray, becoming an Allie counts as losing to us 😂 we always win in the end.
We DID defeat the Gurkhas - that's how they became part of the British Army after the Anglo-Nepalese War. The war was not over Nepal, however, it was over a region of India controlled by Nepal.
There were plenty you had to sign a treaty with because you couldn't conquer them although you are right the British Empire did renege on them all once they got the big numbers in to those countries. All people who couldn't wait to get out of old crappy freezing Great Britain and start a new life away from the oppression and class structure in their own country
I'm from Northern Ireland and if you know you know, how staunch and proudly British we are over here, it's the place in the UK where you'll see the Union Flag decorating most streets all year round and especially over the 12th July Celebrations, but not to burst the British bubble as I'm a Protestant and very much British I have to agree with a statement I heard the other day and I paraphrase; 'that the Roman Empire came to an end when they sat back and revelled in the spoils of their conquests and glories' and sad to say, to a certain extent we're looking back on a Britain that was in better times globally; as the state Britain is in today, especially England, This Empire is at its end and this country is being invaded by a certain "religion of peace" as we speak. Deny it all you want but thee enemy is within Our proud shores! Watch the Collapse of the Roman Empire. Our Government is the prime example that's pretty similar to that of Roman times, divided and has lost the public's support!
if you are a student of the British Empire, particularly in India, you can see strong parallels with the administration of the roman empire. We could have kept the empire but it would have taken brutal repression that emperors of the past would have taken as normal business as usual. Universal suffrage in the UK, strong protestantism and the printed press made this impossible. At one point consideration had been made to create in effect a single state by democracising the whole empire. This could have been monumental but the problem with this was firstly the UK would have ended up with minority representation. Secondly it was deemed unworkable due to recognition of massive corruption and tribalism that would undermine democracy, (- born out by looking at what has happeend to a lot of these countries post independance). Thirdly, the economy would have been unbalanced and unworkable, Britain had developed into the workshop of the world due to the industrial revolution and the empires economic purpose was to provide the resources in return for the products. If a majority were resource providers they may see little need in restricting supplies to the UK. The pupose of the empire if one was decided on was the protection of trade and supplies of resoures via military means. In todays global market, military means are only required to resolve temporary upsets
@@ko0974 I'm no flag waving little Englander but i see it as all too easy for people that never actually looked in detail at what they are talking about in context of the times to join a bandwagon slinging mud because some lobby groups working for foreign powers are rewriting our history unchallenged.
Talking about the Sahara, the SAS special forces unit which first came about in 1941, were initially based in North Africa and with the help of the LRDG (long range desert group) ran lots of covert missions behind enemy lines throughout the whole Sahara region during WWII, sabotaging airfields and such, there's actually an amazing tv series all about it called 'Rogue Warriors', which I'd love to see you react to one day.
Let’s get to the real reason we invaded so many countries, they knew that brits would love to go on holiday to all parts of the world in the 20th century so they made sure we didn’t have to learn another language 😂😂😂😂😂
Worth pointing out Gibraltar is a complex case. It was ceded voluntarily to the UK in 1713, as part of a wider treaty. It's quite an interesting subject actually.
@@ChrisCrossClash Both the Jutes (that gave name to today's Jylland) and the Angles came from Denmark. The Saxons that also invaded the Britons lived just south of these tribes.
@@ChrisCrossClash Credit? The English (not British) *are* indeed Danish, to a very high degree. This is not only due to these migrations but also to the Danelaw some 400 years later. The Danes invaded the British isles pretty independently of any other tribes in both the 400s and 700/800s.
He leaves out a few times when we threw our weight around without actually invading somewhere. For example he didn’t mention Greece, even though during the Don Pacifico affair we blockaded Athens for 2 months and seized the entire Greek navy until they agreed to pay some money to this guy Don Pacifico - he was a private citizen and wasn’t even from the UK, but he’d been born in Gibraltar, so when the Greek government owed him some money we literally took their navy and blockaded their capital until they paid him. That wasn’t technically an “invasion” though.
@@marksavage1108ah fair enough, you’re right, rewatching I see he briefly mentions the UK owning a couple of outlying islands for a short time, without colouring Greece or adding a flag.
We were on the hunt for hot and spicy foods, and Olympic quality athletes, it’s why we were never interested in the moon, plus there was no one to give it back too once we’re done with it! 😉
We left language democracy, rule of law and stability and infrastructure in most of the world. Major influence in peace in the world. Got rid of slavery where ever we could not bad for history.
All Germanic languages spell Irak rather than Iraq. English is the only one that spells the name with a q. And I am pretty sure that in British English Irak is a valid alternative for Iraq. This is probably where the “mistake” on the map comes from.
@@7lillie no the British just went along with something that was intrenched from the beginning of time, but when they understood it made the world stop the hole world if it was not for the British slavery would still be going on, now its only in black African country's and Arab Muslim ones, yet we are blamed for the start the middle and then end, every one in every country benefited from it yet its only we that are blamed from befitting yet it was the British that sent its navy spent trillion apon trillions in ending it, we in the uk did not Finnish paying for the slave we we freed untill 2015. Yet slavery was there before us by thousands of years even you Americans did not stop it till we made you 200 years after we had ended it as for country out the uk took longer but if you take just two mins to watch it you will see we were fighting wars in eroup napoleon. Many white British men died freeing the black man from slavery did we take part yes for maybe a few years but not the two hundred the British colonys may have for two hundred but they are not British ruled by us yes, but they are not British, are we responsible for American slavery ? Even when we told you to stop you did not own it it was you not the British.
They had to start somewhere. More than 1,600 british sailors lost their lives defending the coast of West Africa to stop other nations slaving. We, as a nation, had to take out a loan to compensate the slavers, which we finished paying back in 2015. By the way slavery was and still is a way of life. We were victims ourselves in the 16th century Barbary pirates raided the coast of Cornwall and kidnapped women to be sold on the middle eastern slave markets for the harems.
My father had always referred to the US revolutionary war as a 'family argument' and couldn't understand why a family fight should be celebrated every year by one of the sides...lol...Incidentally I stumbled on George Washingtons great great grandfathers grave (Lawrence Washington) at the Great Brington church recently which is also the estate church to the Spencer family and where a number of the Spencers are buried including Diana Spencers (Lady Diana) father...Sorry for the digression...
Hey guys I am a Royal Navy Veteran & come from a long line of Naval Veterans, it's in the family blood as way back when apparently we were descendants of the Vikings ! TBH we English had been invaded by the Romans & Vikings & didn't really like it that much, we fought back & eventually found we were actually pretty good at it, plus we obviously wanted to find Tea...... So we took the idea from both the Romans & Vikings that excellent shipbuilding was the way to go & luckily we had heck of a lot of Oak. Then we thought about the Romans discipline & the Vikings aggression & went to work, worked out well for about a thousand years ! Obviously we had a massive Navy, very well built, extremely well armed & crewed plus the best rope & canvas etc, way better than the French or Spanish. We also had the "Indiamen", the ships of the East & West India Company, these were heavily armed merchant ships that looked like Warships & often when taking over an island somewhere hot it was in fact an indiaman doing it for the Crown. Either way it didn't make much difference to the locals ! The old joke is "if we saw someone in a skirt we shot him & nicked his country". We missed a few obviously, there are many more countries we attacked at some point & I grew up in Singapore in the 60's when my father was Posted to HMS Terror, Singapore Naval Base was the size of Pearl Harbour back then ! Now it's your turn America, has been since 1956 really, long story, Suez etc, but the UK Military will ALWAYS stand shoulder to shoulder with the U.S.Military, whatever our idiotic politicians do or say ! Chin Up Chaps & check out the War Plan Red video & the time the U.K. Nuked the U.S.using Vulcan Bombers.......
Good video. You can see why in WWII, even though Britain stood alone for the first 2 or 3 years and stopped the German invasion in 1940, British military resourses were so stretched because we still had an empire to run and protect, many of those territories in crucially strategic points around the world. Even though Britain, America and our allies were victorious, Britain had spend over 1/4 of its entire wealth to win the war. By the 1950s Britain was then a large medium power, but America by that point had taken the crown as the #1 superpower. And the world's hierarchical structure will change again... it always has.
As an Englishman i found this vid very interesting, It helps me realise why some peoples of the world don't like the English. As a London taxi driver I have also had many foreign passengers tell me how much they love London for its history and historic buildings along with the many Castles (Northumbria has the most apparently)and ancient Churches some going back a thousand years or more. I also enjoy Vlogs by various foreigners who have travelled the UK and videod their travels highlighting a number of beautiful locations that i will now visit myself. Good work guys.
You never got your independent not with out help from the Spanish and French and if they was not there then it might off been a different story great reaction lads 🇬🇧🇺🇲👍
There is an historic quote that reads 'The empire on which the sun never sets'. The British empire spanned the globe. This led to the saying that the sun never set on it, since it was always daytime somewhere in the empire. There was a brief moment in time when the sun was always in the sky under British rule.
It should be pointed out this wasn't countries England invaded, it is countries Britian invaded. Scots had a huge influence on this also. The British Empire had 1/4 of the world's land mass and people under its control at its peak. It's the largest Empire the world has ever known
If u go to Malta or Cyprus you find numerous little museums containing British world war II relics. They helped greatly in WW2 and we looked after them
In empire building, transport and communication links are key. The Romans had their roads, the Incas had their relay runners, the Mongols had their horses, the British had their ships. The reason why the ships were fast was because of the invention of the accurate marine chronometer or "watch", by John Harrison in 1761. This (finally) allowed accurate, arbitrary navigation, allowing ships to accurately follow great circle routes across oceans instead of having to hug coast lines, or sail tentatively along lines of latitude, etc. It also coincided with the size of ships getting big enough to "routinely" take on oceans. This above all else meant that the Royal Navy and the armed forces it could transport could turn up out of the blue far earlier than anyone else's navy. It also meant that British merchant shipping was quicker too, which boosted the strength of doing trade with the British (money flowed faster, people got rich quicker). Another key thing was an early adoption of undersea telegraphy cables. From the 1850's onwards, a "help!" message could be sent to London in seconds. Which, when you think about it, must have been pretty awesome in its day. Even if the telegraph was shut off, that was a cue for "something's up". By WW1 large chunks of the world were connected by telegraph, and Morse radio was in use. The first thing the British did at the outbreak of the war was to cut Germany's cables, which meant it lost contact with its colonies overseas immediately. To give it perspective (thank you Wikipedia), by 1896 24 of the world's 30 cable laying ships were British. Looking at the map of 1902,1903 of the Eastern Telegraph Company's cables, there were multiple redundant routes from London to pretty much everywhere. If necessary, a message could be got from London to, say, Auckland in just a few minutes. We've not substantially improved on that since.
In terms of total map control at one given time, the absolute height would have been near the end of the Victorian Era when the United Kingdom controlled somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of the entire globe in one capacity or another
There are a few countries that we virtually owned via UK companies and banks making loans and investments, so not included here. The mention of british invasions of other countries to recover debt aludes to this. The ones where we didnt need to do this are not mentioned in the video. I think a biggy was Argentina. I suppose if it did, you could probably, on this basis, show a lot of the West and Africa as being owned by China. Our claim in Antarctica is also not mentioned.
For 'United Kingdom' see England. The "Irish" parliament that signed the Act of Union was open only to Anglican males, so only Anglican males qualified to be an MP and only Anglican males at this time qualified to vote. If you weren't Anglican, you didn't count. Kind of like how the Catholic Church is said to have replaced the Roman Empire I suppose. Empire's a brutal thing, look at Russia. It's practice in England not to teach of their own historic brutalities, which has the effect that you don't fully understand the animosities of those on the receiving end. On the opposite side of that, schools in Northern Ireland do not teach much Irish history for fear of influencing extremism. What people do learn, they learn at home. We can read about what really caused the famine or the scorched earth tactics used in the 1640s and how that affected remote homesteads but, luckily for stability, most people have no interest in that. @Theotherside Does territorial claim in Antarctica amount to anything? That's not a jibe, but an honest question.
@@Al_Ellisande Yes empire is a brutal thing, I don't disagree with anything in particular but brutality was not because of empire, its just the way ordinary people were treated by default then. With reference to Ireland, the catholic church was always promoting revolt, King James had actively promoted Irish officers to undermine Protestant govt so catholic dis-enfranchisement was the only solution that would create a loyal working govt. It didn't really disadvantage as many Catholics with ambition that would have been held back just changed religion to suit Indians will point to the massacre at Amritsar but this was due to an arrogant act of an individual not empire policy. This would happen and will continue to happen under any rule. Similar act happened at Peterloo but no-one would blame Empire. The Irish famine is an easy mark for Irish Nationalists to pin a flag to but at the same time a million English died of starvation every year probably also due to the corn laws but it is not paraded as an act of empire. Massacres and famines have always happened and continued to happen after independence
@@redf7209 I'm not getting into a tit-for-tat argument, that's not what this is about. However, to address the gaps in what is taught: the Irish famine came about during a time of large abundances of food-produce creating vast amounts of wealth for the land-owners, many of whom resided in England. Yet the people who actually farmed the land were dependent on one single crop - which itself originated in the Americas. There are questions here you don't have the answers to because you're not taught that those questions are there to be answered. This is all I'm saying. "This is the way things were done" and "it was a natural phenomenon" are absolute certainties created to maintain a source of national pride rather than to allow questioning and a possible crumbling of said national pride.
@@Al_Ellisande In Engalnd the famine is not taught in any real detail. And I've never relied on what i was taught. The English corn laws guaranteed the price of corn - as you say making the farmers rich. It was grown in England and ireland but the populace in ireland ate potatoes because it was not price controlled. It was unlucky that the weather and blight hit the potatoes. In England the poor suffered and starved too but because of the price of corn being fixed, it lasted over a longer period and gave rise to the anti-cornlaw movement and eventually trade unionism. Irish are not taught this either. Modern economists have argued against providing food aid to famine hit areas because cheap or free food means farmers will not invest in food crops in those areas and prevent the next famine. Right or wrong, this is not very different from what he english government was saying in the 1840s iro irish famine releif. The English government was used to Ireland 'crying wolf' and saw the irish problem as nothing different from the problems of the English population but exagerated. There was little media in those days to correct that point of view convincingly. if it wasnt for the irish diaspora and modern irish nationalism, the famine would have been forgotten about, its just a tool for irish nationalism to throw at the English.
Prior to England invading Ireland, the Irish had been raiding the West coast of England for 100's of years prior... So in reality they started it first. With regards to France it was basically the people who invaded England in 1066 going back to France to try and reclaime their acesteral property.... So it wasn't the 'English". This whole film is without context..... Lighweight rubbish that doesn't differentiate between outright invasion or driving out occupiers as in ww1 and ww2
I honestly thought you'd done this one years ago!! The end comment of 65 different independence days kinds of puts into perspective why we aren't so bothered when the US mentions it to us. Great reaction chaps
That and also because we were constantly fighting the French during that period including Napoleon. Hardly a head-to-head battle, they picked a good time to go about it though.
Someone had to Educate the World .And Look at the British museum .The people from around the world and see their stuff in lovely glass displays .and it won't cost them anything.
Proud to be British, if the entire British navy invaded the US, they would have had no chance, what the US doesn't realise, Britain was at war with the Spanish and France at the same time in 1776, it's truly amazing back then, what we did, coming from such a small island. 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧❤️
The British were a conquered slave nation for over a millennia, starting with the Romans, then the Danes, the French. It's no wonder that Our national anthem is 'Britain never again will be enslaved' or the new version 'Britain never, never, never will be enslaved'. I prefer the original as we should remember our past and how high we rose from our lowest point and how much we changed the world for the better because of it. When we broke free we were like the bullied kid who went to the gym and found steroids, we didn't invade to conquer we went to get the resources we needed to defend ourselves and to stop slavery across the world.
Americans are so obsessed defining the UK by empire (which British people actually don't do), which is why they endlessly request videos like this. And of course they always reduce the UK to England as well, confusing the terms English and British. And they never look at how many countries the US has had troops in, including right at this moment. And that's in the very short history that they define themselves by. The US actually defines itself by military might now way way more than the UK does. And they think other places must be like them.
There is a famous saying, The sun never sets on the British Empire. At one point we literally had control of a country in every time zone on the planet.
yep, we picked on the French a lot. It's the naval history side of things when the Royal Navy start getting stuck in where it gets a little amusing. The running joke was that the French Naval dockyards may as well have worked for the British as the Royal Navy kept nicking the French ships. We even had an Enterprise before USN even existed and we nicked it from the French too 😂 The main thing that allowed the British Empire to grow to such a size and then maintain it was the Royal Navy and the merchant fleet. The British Empire also had a habit of building infrastructure everywhere they went in order to make the flow of trade and commerce much more efficient. It was however the size and expense of the British Empire that brought Britain to the brink of bankruptcy after WW1 but even at the start of WW2 the Royal Navy was STILL the largest navy on the planet. It took the industrial might of a really pissed off USA to finally overtake the Royal Navy in number of hulls during WW2 to take that top spot.
Britain made a lot more money from Jamaica than it did from the American colonies, so it wasn't really worth throwing it's full weight into the Continental Civil War.
I can see many people commenting the same thing, but please react to the greatest raid of all time. Shows you the British moral and why they could achieve things like this
It is a source of pride as a British person that we ruled over this many! The whole world was doing the same thing and Britain was just the best doing it 💯 The world wouldnt be the way it is now without it.
We've run out of new places to invade and will be revisiting a few old faves. Please tidy your porches and await the arrival of our scarlet tunic'd representatives.
It's worth mentioning that a lot of these places were lawless third-world poverty stricken countries that were raised up to modern (for the time) standards and made wealthy. It's also worth mentioning that a lot of these places have descended back to lawlessness and poverty and brought back slavery and the like since 'winning' their freedom. This comment will attract some hate but the truth is often painful.
I worked with a (then) Rhodesian Woman in the Late 1980's just b4 it was about to become Zimbabwe and she told me that Country would collapse from being "The Bread Basket Of Africa" and it did under Robert Mugabe...
irak is the original spelling From Dutch Irak, from Arabic الْعِرَاق (al-ʕirāq, “Iraq”), of uncertain derivation. Medieval Arabic uses 'Iraq' as a geographical term for the area in the south and center of the modern Iraq. Iraq with a Q is the english version
Ireland wasn’t ruled by the ‘British from 1169 - 1921’. It was ruled by England 1169 - 1707 and then by the U.K. 1707 - 1921. Q: How many countries did Scotland invade before forming the union with England in 1707? A: 1, Northumbria in 1039.
Rule britania, britania rules the waves, very proud of this little island of mine and before anyone complains that was the world back then we just decided to be the final boss music, let's not forget we ended slavery aswell for ourselves and other countries we lost thousands trying to stop it
You have to remember with the early dates such as Irelands 1169 that England itself was not very old. England, Britain and the UK exist as an accumulation of amalgamated kingdoms and lands. Ireland and the parts of France were therefore not very different from any other parts of the UK or channel Islands today. Nationalism didnt really exist as we know it now. It was simply about the allegiance of local lords to kings and boundaries existed to define jurisdiction. It was a feudal system and ordinary people only cared about the lord they were bound to who probably helds lands in diverse areas of Britain. DIvisions with Ireland were really only seeded with the division of religeon started wih Henry V111 and exacerbated by Cromwells invasion to stop Royalists using Irish troops. After that date catholics were restricted in civil rights throughout the empire due to the instruction from the pope /catholic church to undermine protestant rule. Even so, the rebellion in 1916 was not supported by the irish population until the leaders were executed. This video also has a number of faults and omissions
As a Dane, they may have used their Navy to do a drive by on our capital when Napoleon was doing his thing but I think it's fair to say that taking over their country, enabling their only King to be given the moniker 'Great', naming hundreds of places and adding a ton of words to their language - we came out on top in terms of who kicked whose ass in terms of history. Angles, Jutes, Danes (formed of the Angles and Jutes in the following era) and Normans (Danes that'd conquered northern France) all dipped their wick in the British rose and had a lasting influence. Albeit we know our place now lol. Edit: Britain Vs France - imagine if Russia and the United States only had 20 miles of water between them, press play..
We would happily have accepted your words without the invasion. Borrowing words is what we do best, that's why we have at least five words for everything and the full dictionary takes up a whole shelf.
@@radman8321 fair fair. Sadly Dk is pretty much a sandbank. We were mostly farmers. England was like the promised land for those second and third sons that weren't getting the family farm. And come on, without the invasion there wouldn't be places with names like Cleethorpes, Grimsby or.. mm yeh like I said, fair fair..
We only wanted to stop the French getting their hands on your navy. We asked you to surrender it to british custody temporarily. You refused, Npoleon was coming for it, so we had to forcibly remove it. Because it became a fight, the ships were taken as prizes and you never got them back and Copenhagen was partly destroyed. Should have just let us look after them for a couple of years. Same thing happened to the French in WW2. We had to sink some of their ships because Hitler wanted them and the French refused to let us keep them safe.
Danish DNA is very strong in my wife's and my family ranging from 23% to 38%, so they definitely dipped their wick in the UK. Maybe we should blame the Danes for it all.
Americans i know you dont get taught real histroy so this may help - in 1776 you were only fighting a small percentage of under equipped British solider. The British were busy fighting much bigger wars aka the French and the Spanish at the same time as well as a bit of Mexico, so the Americans used that as their chance to strike, if the British had their full army and navy the USA would still be 100% British
Next question re those brave colonists 'kicking our butts' all by themselves... ever wondered why pretty much every town in the US has a street named Lafayette? 😉😋
Actually Britain was also invaded & occupied many times, vikings, Saxons, Romans who bought many nationalities from their empire as soldiers with them, the French & the Spanish tried but failed, we British are genetically a mixture of of all of these as is the English language, perhaps our early history of being invaded set us off on the path of war & domination. I don’t feel guilt for my ancestors sins I just pray that the Human Race would now embrace peace!
So, the British Empire was at it's peak in 1921. At that time, Britain ruled over *big breath* Ireland, Canada, Bermuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, Honduras, Pitcairn, The Caymen Isles, Jamaica, Grenada, British Virgin Isles, St. Kits & Nevis, Anguilla, Montserrat, Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & The Grenadines, The Falkland Isles, South Georgia & The Sandwich Isles, St. Helena, Ascension Isles, Minorca, Gibralta, Malta, Heligoland, Cyprus, Egypt, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, NIgeria, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwae, Zanzibar, South Africa, South-West Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles, Maldives, Oman, Aden, Kuwait, Bahrain, India, Ceylon, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Isles, Gilbert Island, Nauru, Ellis Isles, Fiji, New Hebrides, Western Samoa, Tonga, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and some territory in Antartica. The British Empire was known as "the empire on which the sun never sets" because the sun was always shining on at least one territory. Of the countries above, 53 are in the current commonwealth.
In answer to how many countries the British controlled the British Empire was known as "the empire on which the sun never set" because it stretched around the world.
You didn’t kick our butt The revolutionary war was in effect a civil war one of your generals came from a couple of miles away from where I live!Great channel by the way
To be slightly fair, that's just how countries were hundreds of years ago; constantly invading each other and trying to get a piece of each other's pie. There's a reason kings and queens and emperors have gone out of fashion.
Crossed the US in '94 and was amazed about how proud the Americans were of being soundly thrashed in Vietnam by peasants. I am a Londoner it bemused me.
I’m sure someone has mentioned it in comments, but to paraphrase, to Americans your Independence Day was THE defining moment of your history. To Britain it was a Tuesday
Hahaha brilliant and true
love it lol
Ahh brilliant 😂
Couldn't stop laughing, 🤣😭🤣😅😅😅👍
The replies are VERY British.
It started out as a pub crawl and got slightly out of hand.
Sorry about that everyone.
😄😄😄
I have an alternate theory: The England football team has in fact been playing international matches for many centuries. Every time the England team lost (which often happened!) the hooligan supporters beat the crap out of the local population and never got around to going home.
US National Anthem is based on a UK drinking song.
@@DerekDerekDerekDerekDerekDerek He's being ironic...
Tbh most of us ended up there from a bar crawl and woke up in basic training 🤣🤣
A big apology to all those countries we missed,,we were busy,but I'm sure we will get around to you in time ;)
🤣🤣🤣
I think there's 22 to go for the full set.
Lols😂!!!!!! Great comment! I fckn love these two!!!!👍
Don't feel bad about it I'm sure you'll find something interesting we can use eventually
Why would you apologise for past history
These countries where conquered by a greater nation tough
What Americans don't realise is that in 1776 they only fought off a small percentage of the British. Had the British sent the full navy it would have been a very different story. Let's not forget that the British were also fighting the French and the Spanish at the same time all over the globe
There's a reason why the Dutch backed the Americans...
and the Dutch
@@Hadewijch_ yes... they saw an opportunity
Yeah we had a bigger problem in Europe fighting Napoleon to give the yanks our full attention.
Plus they were British.
If you notice Brazil was never invaded it should be noted that the British Portuguese alliance is one of the oldest in the world
Britain did blockade Brazil for a time in an effort to stop slave traders but you are right. England has the oldest standing alliance with Portugal in the history of the planet.
@@Tolrem-uh2ee We were supposed to blockade it but with only 5 ships initially and increased to 10 later according to a documentary on slavery that I watched the other day so wasn't very effective
@@m4rkscott 'twas exactly effective enough to get them to ban slavery. Which was the objective.
Effective enough for Brazil to sue for peace
They are our oldest allies...went there on the Ark Royal on the way back from the gulf so there could be goodwill meetings
The Falklands were never invaded by the British, they were settled as empty islands!
This video gives a big clue why Britain didn't send reinforcements during the revolutionary war. Despite Americans believing that war was the most important war ever the British army had bigger fish to fry mainly a global conflict with the two largest empire's who were funding and training the ungrateful traitors who'd caused the war which necessitated a rise in trade tariffs.
To give you an idea of how ridiculous our influence has been:
There are currently 7.8 billion people in the world
2.6 billion of them live in the Commonwealth (ie nations that were once part of the British Empire), and that doesn't count the 400 million or so in the US, let alone the ones we invaded but never ruled in Europe.
So if we count the US, effectively 38% of the current population of the world live in countries that once had our King or Queen as head of state.
And you could fit the whole of Britain nearly four times into Texas.
Mind-blowing really.
No, Texas is 268k square miles, the UK is just under 100k square miles. So the UK would fit into Texas 2.6 times.
Yup, it's the largest group of Humans on the planet.
@@SgtSteel1 it's a shame we wasn't at the Alamo, it would have turned out different hombre!!! 😂 🇬🇧
@@SgtSteel1 - You must be fun at parties.
@@lotuselise4432 I am the life of the party
You have to understand our makeup, we are a genetic mixture of Ancient Britons( Celts, Picts), Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings, Normans. All of these were warriors, and mix them together, it may also explain why we like a drink or two.
Our arch enemies the French used to say, wherever we go in this world, wherever there is enough water to sail a ship, we are sure find the british there waiting for us!! 🇬🇧👍
I blame the Danes and the Norwegians, especially the Danes. When they came calling in England they rowed across the sea, found a handy river, and kept on going; that's how we learned to navigate. Then they "married" a few local girls and as a result a whole bunch of us - well, pretty much all of us - have Viking blood, and once that stuff gets into your veins all you can do is go wandering. However, if you live on a small island the only places you can wander to will be a) overseas and b) already occupied by other people, which poses a small problem until you point to the guns on your ships being larger than their pea-shooters; at that point they usually say "Oh, oops, please come in."
In fact, if you look at those maps again, you'll see that there are only a few large areas of the world we didn't get to. Firstly, as well as the Sahara and Saudi Arabia, there are other great deserts, like the Gobi. I think someone went for a daytrip once, realised there were no large rivers, and went home again. Same goes for the Atacama, where it never rains at all; if there's no rain there's no water, and if there's no water, bang goes having a cuppa. And secondly, we never went where the Portuguese were there already. The English/Portuguese alliance is the oldest and longest in the world so we didn't touch Brazil or the other, mainly small, areas they got to first. It's a global example of honour amongst thieves. 😁
Tru Say,Mi Bredda.
Tru Say. We are Warriors,Mi Bredrin. Zeeeennn
Plus Britain is a crappy cold place and they wanted to go somewhere else for a better life
Genetic memory is true
The saying used to go ' The Sun never sets on the British Empire' , because between the 18th and 20th centuries we had some land or countries under our control where ever the sun was at any time. At its peak, the British empire covered a quarter of the Earth's surface.
You missed the word sun 😉
@@redrock425 Did I ;) Thanks
This is technically still true, although now it’s because we have little islands everywhere rather than places like India and Canada.
'The Sun never sets on the British Empire, because even God doesn't trust us with the lights out' ... :- )
The sun never sets and the blood never dries
The search for tasty and spicy food is a great motivator. That's why we gave up so quickly in North America, the food is shite!🤣
I offer no apologies. The sun never set on the British Empire. Britain gave much more than it took, including the rule of law, the end to slavery and the industrial revolution which began the road to the technologies we take for granted.
No, the "British Empire" didn't give more than it took, that's just how all imperialists try to justify their excesses of racism, exploitation and slavery - which Britain was fully involved in!
From being basically barbarians on a tiny island at the edge of the world we didn't do so bad... Bit hard on the folk we gave a kicking to though
And hey guys, we won the final round 1812 etc. You lot sued for peace ☮️
Possibly the greatest understatement of all time lol
😂💯👍🏻
We might have been a bit hard on them at the start, but the countries we controlled or created are now among the richest on the globe.
Barbarians? No mate. Just No.
For Barbarians we didn't do too badly. So many countries have some form of Democracy for example. Shame we can't invade Russia now...
It's so amazing when you consider how small the UK was
Is
Still is
The power of innovation in transport and warfare, good organisation, discipline. The same things that saw the Roman empire be so successful in its day.
that's why we're being destroyed now, revenge I suppose.
@@joycegibbs5267 Same goes for all of europe.
You'll love the documentary done by Jeremy clarkson on how hard it is to get the Victoria cross
Not to mention the follow up about Operation Chariot.
Iv heard that soldiers who survive war don't even get awarded it as it's now given to soldiers who give their lives to save others
The greatest raid of all time by Jeremy clarkson is the greatest documentary I’ve seen
@Reece B that's incorrect
@@MrReeceBrennan yeah that’s wrong
You didn't really "kick our butts". Yes we were made to retreat but we were fighting on several fronts AND you had help from the French .(LaFayette all that lot)and some indigenous people (last of the Mohicans gives insight into that), and America (US) at that time was only the 13 colonies(mainly farmland and wide open spaces) it was nothing like the powerhouse America (US) is today.
Maybe if we had realised how powerful America (US) was to become we would have paid more attention.
the exact moment i hit dislike
Don't forget, the US sued for peace because they where worried the Brirish would take the US more seriously. Kicked our butt's??? That definitely didn't happen, that's what is taught in US schools
If we had known about the gold and the potential value of oil, it would have been a different story. No need for oil when there are no machines.
not just the French either, Spain and the Netherlands joined in a fair bit too, so basically they needed THREE other European powers to help them beat us...
@@DraconimLt they didnt beat us the army in america was needed in europe
As a British person, watching you guys react to this video fills me with shame. On behalf of all British people I whole heartily apologise for all the countries we missed :(
So close to having the full set.
Don't apologise for me mate ,I wasn't there, wasn't even born till 1961 and we have never colonised anyone jn my life time
@@maxmoore9955 READ IT PROPERLY................he is apologising for Countries we MISSED...............J O K E...
lol
@@maxmoore9955 well said.
What can I say, us Brits have always liked a good foreign holiday. 😎😎
And many just wanted to leave Britain for better climate and a better life. Basically they wanted to get out of Britain. The riff raff stayed behind
We went around the world saying "Do you have a flag?" If they didn't, we claimed that country. Simple.
Being a Brit I would just like to piont out the there are 22 countries we have not invaded .......YET!
Some we 'discovered' and were the first to colonise - like the USA and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, etc. You have to remember that at it's height the race to discover and control the world was between England (not a Union at the time), Spain, France, Portugal and the Netherlands. And what everyone conveniently forgets is (1) England was itself invaded many times before William the Conqueror in 1066, and (2) every country we colonised benefited from it and the majority were given independence when they asked for it - not all of course as you can testify to! BUT your Constitution and Bill of Rights was based on the English Magna Carta written in 1215!!! Do remind me guys, which country has the USA conquered single-handedly???? There has NEVER been another Empire that at one time controlled A QUARTER of the known world.
I'm sure the people in those areas didn't see it as an invasion
I realise you said England above, but it was the Scots who were the driving force of the Empire. You are banging on about Wiliam the conquerer, yet ignoring what made the Empire, what made the Empire was the modern creation of education which was in Scotland at the time. Take people like Thomas Blake Glover who created modern Japan. Scots and Scottish education and inventions made the Empire, not the English and william the conquerer ffs. That was 1000 years too late. 22 signatories to the declaration of independence were Scots and it was based on the declaration of Arbroath, not the Magna Carta
@@OneTrueScotsmanthey had the thirst but lacked the ability. They joined the English because they blew all their money on a failed empire
@@OneTrueScotsman: What truly made the map red, signifying ownership, annexation, proper influence - and not just flags signifying wars - was the Industrial revolution. That was very much a joint effort, and Scotland's influence was much larger than 8%. Just look up any list of Scottish inventions from that era and on.
@@OneTrueScotsman The Empire had fuck all to do with parliament and representation. It was built on technology, education and modern thinking. The Empire was built on trade and companies that were created at the time, so you mentioning parliamentary percentage is laughable to be honest.
The countries Scotland invaded also had nothing to do with it. Scotland on it's own was never gonna dominate. We did need the British Navy at the time to help and we were part of that. However Scotland did make the Empire, history and looking at inventions at the time and looking at key people at the time shows us. There is a great book called how Scots created the modern world
Invaded is a strong word. We like to think more of it as calling in for a cup of tea and staying for dinner :)
Quite a few of these are where we were invited in or where our assets of other territories were attacked or threatened first, or where we threw out other invaders. You could say we did a lot of this map by accident
it was not Britains fault that those nations didn't have a Flag ;)
Toxic britishness
@@jessesleight9631 nothing toxic about winning
Oh the irony...called to India for a cup of tea was it ..after going to Dinner in Ireland, starving 1million scattering another million to the 4 corners many dying on route in the coffin ships...easier then spending rest of lives in servitude ...than back to eat all of India's food too .killing many more millions ....what a fantastic people and soo proud of this..
At its height in 1922, it was the largest empire the world had ever seen, covering around a quarter of Earth’s land surface and ruling over 458 million people.
The British Empire evolved out of the need to Trade, and to protect that Trade from rivals: the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Belgiums, and French.
Unlike some of those other empires, it was not created for reasons of national prestige or race supremacy. It was sole and simply, an Empire of Trade, in goods and services.
It created the Global Economic Stem we have today in the world, and the major institution which support it.
This is why the English language in the international language, of business, science, communications, and maritime law.
Having over centuries established all of these Trading Relationship, this is also the reason why the UK was able to give up the British Empire, and convert it to the Commonwealth of Nations. Maintaining those relationships, to this day.
Other empires, build instead on national prestige or race supremacy (like the Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, Belgiums, and French), have been unsuccessful in doing the same. The majority of them have very bad relationships with their former colonies.
What a load of romantic hogwash. No prestige or race supremacy my ass
You also need to bear in mind that in 1776, Britain was at war with France, Spain and on-and-off the Dutch AT THE SAME TIME. Without the MASSIVE assistance of the French, the US Revolutionary War would have been an easy win for the British Empire. Britain was simply spread too thinly and had to make some hard choices: fight the insurrection in the colonies or risk an invasion at home and the potential loss of very lucrative assets elsewhere in the empire. Based on the fact that following the decision to abandon the fight in the colonies, soundly defeating the French, Spanish AND Dutch, as well as pushing back an American invasion of Canada in 1815 (even burning down the Whitehouse and eating the US President's dinner at his own dining table) it seems like a pretty sound decision.
As for WHY, the best comment I've ever heard was: "Britain invaded the entire world in search of spices only to discover they didn't like any of them." :)
The story of TEA is actually REALLY fascinating and still a point of great consternation to the Chinese who consider what happened to be, essentially, corporate espionage. Look up the story of the Scottish botanist, Robert Fortune and how he essentially stole the secrets of cultivating tea from China.
While you are basically correct, I must note that the French officially declared war in 1779, though in truth had been _de facto_ heavily supportive of the American cause in a rather underhanded way for a while longer. Saratoga convinced them to get their hands and boots dirty themselves. They were nominally signatories of the Treaty of Paris 1763, in which France did cede many territories to Britain, in the defeat of France.
It was something which the French Monarchy was not very happy about to say the least. Ironically, King Louis XV was almost singularly disinterested in the Americas, as he and his wife were _far_ more interested and concerned with events on the mainland of continental Europe, especially to the East of France (where powerful enemies of the French were fighting them actively on different war fronts)
The British were clearly not on good terms with the French after such a massive scale of conflict that doubled British national debt during the Seven Years War. The absolute very last thing they wanted, was another globe-spanning war which required them to thinly spread their forces and spend exorbitant amounts of money to keep it going.
And yet, that is basically what happened, as the French (and Spanish) got heavily-involved. As you say, the Dutch, too (often overlooked or dismissed, though very easily one of the most powerful naval forces of the late 18th century; and while the British and Dutch did clash here and there, the majority of the problem the Dutch presented, was forcing Britain to allocate more ships and crews elsewhere, _in case_ the Dutch decided to be cheeky over here or over there etc)
Another very regularly overlooked faction fighting the British, were the Mysoreans of the Sultanate of Mysore. The fact that Tipu Sultan had at his disposal, something in the order of 50,000-60,000 warriors, pointed at British lines in what is now Southern India, is not exactly something which should be overlooked.
Nor the fact, that the French and British both had lots of native sepoys and both fought with naval elements in serious naval battles, just as they already had in India for years, in the again, largely forgotten Carnatic Wars. Un-ironically the last direct engagement/action of the timeline of the various interwoven conflicts, ending in 1783, was the Siege of Cuddalore. In what is now India.
This capped off the Second Anglo-Mysore War (as part of the various conflicts the British were engaged in simultaneously around the world) It was an inconclusive siege, largely because the news of the peace treaty and cessation of hostilities had been brought to light) only just arrived (the Treaty of Paris 1783, which was largely _unkind_ to the British at their expense, much the opposite of the Treaty of Paris 1763)
The Treaty of Aranjuez 1779 between France and Spain, planned for greater military cooperation between the two members of the House of Bourbon Dynasty, of Absolute Royalists; against Britain, having difficulties dealing with what was, in truth, a British affair of a British civil war. Royalist France and Spain gave not one hoot about American 'liberty'. That was all just a crock of BS. They really just wanted revenge, pure and simple. And all else was vanity and lies.
The very fact that Royalist France directly became bankrupted in that exertion and ordeal, for the sake of getting their own back against Britain, should show us all just how spiteful the French Monarchy truly was. It would basically begin the countdown to it's own destruction out of it's own venomous hatred for the British - and ironically enough, the French people themselves would rise up and destroy the French Monarchy a decade or so after the American War of Independence. Kind of a gigantic backfire.
Sure, plenty of French people were already sick of their corrupt system and horrible absolute monarchy, though there were _plenty more_ totally loyal to that faction, never forget that. It will often be downplayed now with some classic, salty French historical revisionism sprinkled on it, though in truth, a huge number of French loyalists would have been around during the American War of Independence. Lafayette may not have been so inclined, true enough, though he was a young lad and looked up to George Washington (a literal former British officer) as a father figure. It went far beyond just a matter of being inspired by his colleague. It was like he was the son Washington never had, in no uncertain terms.
French Royalist propaganda against the British was, like the Spanish equivalent, so intense in that time, that it persisted even beyond the destruction of the French monarchy itself. The French Revolutionaries and Republicans were more than happy to continue their toxic hostility towards the British. Again, the British will often get blamed for that (just a form of historical gaslighting that goes on constantly it really is mental) as though the French were innocent cherubs with absolutely nothing wrong with their own attitudes to the British.
The French had been rivals with the English for centuries, and then, as now, it was common to default to Anglophobia. For instance, if a French President is about to go into an election campaign season, he'll typically leave the French capital and tour coastal towns and drum up anti-British rhetoric about fishing rights (even though French ships have literally been given _far_ too much leeway in British territorial waters, by EU policies in the recent past, and allowed to basically - in my view, F the EU - steal British fish stocks and scallops too btw) France even threatened to sadistically cut off Jersey's power supplies over this issue. France can often resort to just wheeling out the Anglophobic political diatribe if they think it will win votes - then guess what the President or other senior politician does?
They return to Paris, continuing to pretend they care about the French fishermen after riling them up to win their votes. Classic French political behaviour. And that is _modern France_ of the Fifth French Republic (yes, their fifth) and modern France of NATO membership, fellow founding member of NATO status, allegedly allied, Entente Cordiale historically allied France. Now imagine what Royalist France was saying about the British (and sure, we gave it _right back_ for sure, as so we should have in my view)
What is often forgotten is that the French were on the cusp of trying to strong-arm half of Europe in the time of Louis XIV 'the Sun King', and persistent resilience and defiance by England/Britain, put a huge dampener on the ferocity of France expansionism in the early 18th century. The likes of the 1st Duke of Marlborough, John Churchill (Winston's ancestor), denied the French full-hegemonic dominion of Europe, and defended the members of the Grand Alliance against the French Royalists and their allies.
The French had great generals and so did England and it's allies. There were many severely overlooked and oft now forgotten battles, which made sure France's power was checked on the mainland. And naturally, the French never really forgave us for it. Point being, that England/Britain went from a popular hero of Europe standing up to the big bully, France, and helping many allies, to being painted as a villain by France (successfully) for decades, with French hypocrisy hitting as yet unseen levels.
Then, by the Napoleonic Wars, Britain was the hero again bankrolling begging European factions desperate for capital to stay in the fight. Britain was the provider. Britain was grand-daddy lend lease in the Napoleonic Wars and Coalitions. Yes, the coalitions kept failing (5 out of 7 times) though it was British investment - again basically doubling British national debt at that time, on top of already high national debt because of numerous other wars - but the end result was to defeat Napoleon (twice, strategically in the last two coalitions) and to stop that iteration of a highly autocratic and tyrannical France. Revisionists and Napoleon lovers are basically determined to try and pretend he wasn't as bad as 'British propaganda said', but then they go quiet when you mention how Napoleonic Paris went from having ~64 newspapers to 4 regime controlled ones. Funny that, eh?
Britain was routinely going to get vilified by first France, then Russia, then Germany. To the point that by the Boer Wars, the French and Germans twisted a lot of public opinion against Britain on the continent, calling the British 'brutes'. Sound familiar? Sound a bit like the Franco-German narratives coming out of the EU against Brexit Britain? Well that is because they are familiar for a good reason; because the very same Anglophobia has been entrenched in Europe for centuries but nobody can usually be bothered to acknowledge it. It's apparently 'alright if they do it'.
P.S - The USA technically invaded Canada 10 times in that war, across 3 years of campaigns, in three main campaign seasons. All failed. Largely due to British allies like the Canadiens/Canadians (depending on whether Francophone or Anglophone) and the First Nations League of Tribes like the Iroquois. Britain had
So why did Britain send armies there to fight if they weren't interested?
@@craigkennett6226 they were, but at some point they realized that losing 13 colonies was not nearly as important as dealing with france, dutch, and spain
@@czarson6694 But they lost the war. You make it sound like they withdrew but they didn't so what are you on about
We couldn't defeat Nepal. They are true warriors who have immense discipline and courage. The terrain didn't make it any easier. We now have the honour to serve alongside these famous warriors AKA the Gurkhas. In the words of Al Murray, becoming an Allie counts as losing to us 😂 we always win in the end.
We DID defeat the Gurkhas - that's how they became part of the British Army after the Anglo-Nepalese War. The war was not over Nepal, however, it was over a region of India controlled by Nepal.
@@Kestrel1971 So as I said, we didn't defeat Nepal. The region you speak of was controlled and ceded by Nepal at the end of the war.
It's the altitude, we're much better fighting at sea level.
On a huge ship covered in guns preferably.
There were plenty you had to sign a treaty with because you couldn't conquer them although you are right the British Empire did renege on them all once they got the big numbers in to those countries. All people who couldn't wait to get out of old crappy freezing Great Britain and start a new life away from the oppression and class structure in their own country
The Greatest Raid of All,the one with Clarkson is a great visual and representation of what happened
Another good one RAF quick alert reaction for modern time
yeah that's a good watch,when he goes up in the plane and the jets arrive either side,tad bit scary to see that at the end of your wings haha
Is that Clarkson the racist bigot? God he'd love doing something like that with his chest pumped out
I'm from Northern Ireland and if you know you know, how staunch and proudly British we are over here, it's the place in the UK where you'll see the Union Flag decorating most streets all year round and especially over the 12th July Celebrations, but not to burst the British bubble as I'm a Protestant and very much British I have to agree with a statement I heard the other day and I paraphrase; 'that the Roman Empire came to an end when they sat back and revelled in the spoils of their conquests and glories' and sad to say, to a certain extent we're looking back on a Britain that was in better times globally; as the state Britain is in today, especially England, This Empire is at its end and this country is being invaded by a certain "religion of peace" as we speak.
Deny it all you want but thee enemy is within Our proud shores!
Watch the Collapse of the Roman Empire. Our Government is the prime example that's pretty similar to that of Roman times, divided and has lost the public's support!
if you are a student of the British Empire, particularly in India, you can see strong parallels with the administration of the roman empire. We could have kept the empire but it would have taken brutal repression that emperors of the past would have taken as normal business as usual. Universal suffrage in the UK, strong protestantism and the printed press made this impossible. At one point consideration had been made to create in effect a single state by democracising the whole empire. This could have been monumental but the problem with this was firstly the UK would have ended up with minority representation. Secondly it was deemed unworkable due to recognition of massive corruption and tribalism that would undermine democracy, (- born out by looking at what has happeend to a lot of these countries post independance). Thirdly, the economy would have been unbalanced and unworkable, Britain had developed into the workshop of the world due to the industrial revolution and the empires economic purpose was to provide the resources in return for the products. If a majority were resource providers they may see little need in restricting supplies to the UK. The pupose of the empire if one was decided on was the protection of trade and supplies of resoures via military means. In todays global market, military means are only required to resolve temporary upsets
What is the "religion of peace"?
@@jessesleight9631 its a myth it doesnt exist
Wow arrogance and ignorance...living in the Island ..with your flags and bunting ...and matching
@@ko0974 I'm no flag waving little Englander but i see it as all too easy for people that never actually looked in detail at what they are talking about in context of the times to join a bandwagon slinging mud because some lobby groups working for foreign powers are rewriting our history unchallenged.
Talking about the Sahara, the SAS special forces unit which first came about in 1941, were initially based in North Africa and with the help of the LRDG (long range desert group) ran lots of covert missions behind enemy lines throughout the whole Sahara region during WWII, sabotaging airfields and such, there's actually an amazing tv series all about it called 'Rogue Warriors', which I'd love to see you react to one day.
The brains and brawn of SAS were Irish
@@ko0974 The SAS was set up by the Scottish David Stirling before Paddy Mayne took over after Stirling was captured and became a pow.
Let’s get to the real reason we invaded so many countries, they knew that brits would love to go on holiday to all parts of the world in the 20th century so they made sure we didn’t have to learn another language 😂😂😂😂😂
Quite right. Gibraltar was originally planned to be a layover stop for drunk teens heading for Spanish beaches. (Not a lot of people know that).
Have you been to America? Lol
@@101steel4 been many times to USA, the trouble with America is they think they speak English 😂😂😂😂😂
@@jimwalker1404 exactly 😁
In the words of Al Murray it was the search for hot and spicy food and Olympic quality athletes.
Worth pointing out Gibraltar is a complex case. It was ceded voluntarily to the UK in 1713, as part of a wider treaty. It's quite an interesting subject actually.
It was just a world tour!!in the Sixties we sent the Beatles.👍🇬🇧😊
Makes it even more impressive when you consider how small England is.
Who was invaded by even smaller Denmark. At least twice, counting the major ones.
@@herrbonk3635 Wasn't just Denmark, get your facts right first.
@@ChrisCrossClash Both the Jutes (that gave name to today's Jylland) and the Angles came from Denmark. The Saxons that also invaded the Britons lived just south of these tribes.
@@herrbonk3635 Northern Germany get it right, we ain't Danes so don't try and take any credit that Brits are Danish.
@@ChrisCrossClash Credit? The English (not British) *are* indeed Danish, to a very high degree. This is not only due to these migrations but also to the Danelaw some 400 years later. The Danes invaded the British isles pretty independently of any other tribes in both the 400s and 700/800s.
It’s great to know we successfully invaded your channel 😜
Every place that Britain colonised was left in a better state then when we first arrived.
He leaves out a few times when we threw our weight around without actually invading somewhere. For example he didn’t mention Greece, even though during the Don Pacifico affair we blockaded Athens for 2 months and seized the entire Greek navy until they agreed to pay some money to this guy Don Pacifico - he was a private citizen and wasn’t even from the UK, but he’d been born in Gibraltar, so when the Greek government owed him some money we literally took their navy and blockaded their capital until they paid him. That wasn’t technically an “invasion” though.
Greece was mentiomed
@@marksavage1108ah fair enough, you’re right, rewatching I see he briefly mentions the UK owning a couple of outlying islands for a short time, without colouring Greece or adding a flag.
We were on the hunt for hot and spicy foods, and Olympic quality athletes, it’s why we were never interested in the moon, plus there was no one to give it back too once we’re done with it! 😉
Beat me to it !
We left language democracy, rule of law and stability and infrastructure in most of the world. Major influence in peace in the world. Got rid of slavery where ever we could not bad for history.
All Germanic languages spell Irak rather than Iraq. English is the only one that spells the name with a q. And I am pretty sure that in British English Irak is a valid alternative for Iraq. This is probably where the “mistake” on the map comes from.
They also spelled eye ran wrong.
Like WasSington and NicaraguE....lol
I'm seeing IRAK used more and more these days, even on maps on the news
The British ended slavery?? Fact ,
The link : the British crusade against slavery.
Yeah after benefitting from it for 200+ years- it's like a rapist wanting credit when they stop the attack and tell their mates to stop now.
@@7lillie no the British just went along with something that was intrenched from the beginning of time, but when they understood it made the world stop the hole world if it was not for the British slavery would still be going on, now its only in black African country's and Arab Muslim ones, yet we are blamed for the start the middle and then end, every one in every country benefited from it yet its only we that are blamed from befitting yet it was the British that sent its navy spent trillion apon trillions in ending it, we in the uk did not Finnish paying for the slave we we freed untill 2015. Yet slavery was there before us by thousands of years even you Americans did not stop it till we made you 200 years after we had ended it as for country out the uk took longer but if you take just two mins to watch it you will see we were fighting wars in eroup napoleon. Many white British men died freeing the black man from slavery did we take part yes for maybe a few years but not the two hundred the British colonys may have for two hundred but they are not British ruled by us yes, but they are not British, are we responsible for American slavery ? Even when we told you to stop you did not own it it was you not the British.
They had to start somewhere. More than 1,600 british sailors lost their lives defending the coast of West Africa to stop other nations slaving. We, as a nation, had to take out a loan to compensate the slavers, which we finished paying back in 2015.
By the way slavery was and still is a way of life. We were victims ourselves in the 16th century Barbary pirates raided the coast of Cornwall and kidnapped women to be sold on the middle eastern slave markets for the harems.
My father had always referred to the US revolutionary war as a 'family argument' and couldn't understand why a family fight should be celebrated every year by one of the sides...lol...Incidentally I stumbled on George Washingtons great great grandfathers grave (Lawrence Washington) at the Great Brington church recently which is also the estate church to the Spencer family and where a number of the Spencers are buried including Diana Spencers (Lady Diana) father...Sorry for the digression...
The Sun never sets on the British Empire, because God didn't trust us in the dark!
Hey guys I am a Royal Navy Veteran & come from a long line of Naval Veterans, it's in the family blood as way back when apparently we were descendants of the Vikings !
TBH we English had been invaded by the Romans & Vikings & didn't really like it that much, we fought back & eventually found we were actually pretty good at it, plus we obviously wanted to find Tea......
So we took the idea from both the Romans & Vikings that excellent shipbuilding was the way to go & luckily we had heck of a lot of Oak.
Then we thought about the Romans discipline & the Vikings aggression & went to work, worked out well for about a thousand years !
Obviously we had a massive Navy, very well built, extremely well armed & crewed plus the best rope & canvas etc, way better than the French or Spanish.
We also had the "Indiamen", the ships of the East & West India Company, these were heavily armed merchant ships that looked like Warships & often when taking over an island somewhere hot it was in fact an indiaman doing it for the Crown.
Either way it didn't make much difference to the locals !
The old joke is "if we saw someone in a skirt we shot him & nicked his country".
We missed a few obviously, there are many more countries we attacked at some point & I grew up in Singapore in the 60's when my father was Posted to HMS Terror, Singapore Naval Base was the size of Pearl Harbour back then !
Now it's your turn America, has been since 1956 really, long story, Suez etc, but the UK Military will ALWAYS stand shoulder to shoulder with the U.S.Military, whatever our idiotic politicians do or say !
Chin Up Chaps & check out the War Plan Red video & the time the U.K. Nuked the U.S.using Vulcan Bombers.......
Good video. You can see why in WWII, even though Britain stood alone for the first 2 or 3 years and stopped the German invasion in 1940, British military resourses were so stretched because we still had an empire to run and protect, many of those territories in crucially strategic points around the world.
Even though Britain, America and our allies were victorious, Britain had spend over 1/4 of its entire wealth to win the war.
By the 1950s Britain was then a large medium power, but America by that point had taken the crown as the #1 superpower. And the world's hierarchical structure will change again... it always has.
As an Englishman i found this vid very interesting, It helps me realise why some peoples of the world don't like the English.
As a London taxi driver I have also had many foreign passengers tell me how much they love London for its history and historic buildings along with the many Castles (Northumbria has the most apparently)and ancient Churches some going back a thousand years or more. I also enjoy Vlogs by various foreigners who have travelled the UK and videod their travels highlighting a number of beautiful locations that i will now visit myself. Good work guys.
You never got your independent not with out help from the Spanish and French and if they was not there then it might off been a different story great reaction lads 🇬🇧🇺🇲👍
There is an historic quote that reads 'The empire on which the sun never sets'.
The British empire spanned the globe. This led to the saying that the sun never set on it, since it was always daytime somewhere in the empire. There was a brief moment in time when the sun was always in the sky under British rule.
It should be pointed out this wasn't countries England invaded, it is countries Britian invaded. Scots had a huge influence on this also. The British Empire had 1/4 of the world's land mass and people under its control at its peak. It's the largest Empire the world has ever known
If u go to Malta or Cyprus you find numerous little museums containing British world war II relics. They helped greatly in WW2 and we looked after them
We were World Risk Champions back in the day
People are jealous and bitter because they couldn't have an empire as big. Even though some have tried.
In empire building, transport and communication links are key. The Romans had their roads, the Incas had their relay runners, the Mongols had their horses, the British had their ships. The reason why the ships were fast was because of the invention of the accurate marine chronometer or "watch", by John Harrison in 1761.
This (finally) allowed accurate, arbitrary navigation, allowing ships to accurately follow great circle routes across oceans instead of having to hug coast lines, or sail tentatively along lines of latitude, etc. It also coincided with the size of ships getting big enough to "routinely" take on oceans. This above all else meant that the Royal Navy and the armed forces it could transport could turn up out of the blue far earlier than anyone else's navy. It also meant that British merchant shipping was quicker too, which boosted the strength of doing trade with the British (money flowed faster, people got rich quicker).
Another key thing was an early adoption of undersea telegraphy cables. From the 1850's onwards, a "help!" message could be sent to London in seconds. Which, when you think about it, must have been pretty awesome in its day. Even if the telegraph was shut off, that was a cue for "something's up". By WW1 large chunks of the world were connected by telegraph, and Morse radio was in use. The first thing the British did at the outbreak of the war was to cut Germany's cables, which meant it lost contact with its colonies overseas immediately.
To give it perspective (thank you Wikipedia), by 1896 24 of the world's 30 cable laying ships were British. Looking at the map of 1902,1903 of the Eastern Telegraph Company's cables, there were multiple redundant routes from London to pretty much everywhere. If necessary, a message could be got from London to, say, Auckland in just a few minutes. We've not substantially improved on that since.
In terms of total map control at one given time, the absolute height would have been near the end of the Victorian Era when the United Kingdom controlled somewhere between 1/4 to 1/3 of the entire globe in one capacity or another
There are a few countries that we virtually owned via UK companies and banks making loans and investments, so not included here. The mention of british invasions of other countries to recover debt aludes to this. The ones where we didnt need to do this are not mentioned in the video. I think a biggy was Argentina. I suppose if it did, you could probably, on this basis, show a lot of the West and Africa as being owned by China. Our claim in Antarctica is also not mentioned.
For 'United Kingdom' see England. The "Irish" parliament that signed the Act of Union was open only to Anglican males, so only Anglican males qualified to be an MP and only Anglican males at this time qualified to vote. If you weren't Anglican, you didn't count. Kind of like how the Catholic Church is said to have replaced the Roman Empire I suppose. Empire's a brutal thing, look at Russia.
It's practice in England not to teach of their own historic brutalities, which has the effect that you don't fully understand the animosities of those on the receiving end. On the opposite side of that, schools in Northern Ireland do not teach much Irish history for fear of influencing extremism. What people do learn, they learn at home. We can read about what really caused the famine or the scorched earth tactics used in the 1640s and how that affected remote homesteads but, luckily for stability, most people have no interest in that.
@Theotherside Does territorial claim in Antarctica amount to anything? That's not a jibe, but an honest question.
@@Al_Ellisande Yes empire is a brutal thing, I don't disagree with anything in particular but brutality was not because of empire, its just the way ordinary people were treated by default then. With reference to Ireland, the catholic church was always promoting revolt, King James had actively promoted Irish officers to undermine Protestant govt so catholic dis-enfranchisement was the only solution that would create a loyal working govt. It didn't really disadvantage as many Catholics with ambition that would have been held back just changed religion to suit Indians will point to the massacre at Amritsar but this was due to an arrogant act of an individual not empire policy. This would happen and will continue to happen under any rule. Similar act happened at Peterloo but no-one would blame Empire. The Irish famine is an easy mark for Irish Nationalists to pin a flag to but at the same time a million English died of starvation every year probably also due to the corn laws but it is not paraded as an act of empire. Massacres and famines have always happened and continued to happen after independence
@@redf7209 I'm not getting into a tit-for-tat argument, that's not what this is about. However, to address the gaps in what is taught: the Irish famine came about during a time of large abundances of food-produce creating vast amounts of wealth for the land-owners, many of whom resided in England. Yet the people who actually farmed the land were dependent on one single crop - which itself originated in the Americas. There are questions here you don't have the answers to because you're not taught that those questions are there to be answered. This is all I'm saying.
"This is the way things were done" and "it was a natural phenomenon" are absolute certainties created to maintain a source of national pride rather than to allow questioning and a possible crumbling of said national pride.
@@Al_Ellisande In Engalnd the famine is not taught in any real detail. And I've never relied on what i was taught. The English corn laws guaranteed the price of corn - as you say making the farmers rich. It was grown in England and ireland but the populace in ireland ate potatoes because it was not price controlled. It was unlucky that the weather and blight hit the potatoes. In England the poor suffered and starved too but because of the price of corn being fixed, it lasted over a longer period and gave rise to the anti-cornlaw movement and eventually trade unionism. Irish are not taught this either. Modern economists have argued against providing food aid to famine hit areas because cheap or free food means farmers will not invest in food crops in those areas and prevent the next famine. Right or wrong, this is not very different from what he english government was saying in the 1840s iro irish famine releif. The English government was used to Ireland 'crying wolf' and saw the irish problem as nothing different from the problems of the English population but exagerated. There was little media in those days to correct that point of view convincingly. if it wasnt for the irish diaspora and modern irish nationalism, the famine would have been forgotten about, its just a tool for irish nationalism to throw at the English.
Prior to England invading Ireland, the Irish had been raiding the West coast of England for 100's of years prior... So in reality they started it first. With regards to France it was basically the people who invaded England in 1066 going back to France to try and reclaime their acesteral property.... So it wasn't the 'English". This whole film is without context..... Lighweight rubbish that doesn't differentiate between outright invasion or driving out occupiers as in ww1 and ww2
I honestly thought you'd done this one years ago!! The end comment of 65 different independence days kinds of puts into perspective why we aren't so bothered when the US mentions it to us. Great reaction chaps
That and also because we were constantly fighting the French during that period including Napoleon. Hardly a head-to-head battle, they picked a good time to go about it though.
Someone had to Educate the World .And Look at the British museum .The people from around the world and see their stuff in lovely glass displays .and it won't cost them anything.
I'm a Brit, so I understand that we're awesome yeah? And that video you're reacting too is STILL mind boggling!
Proud to be British, if the entire British navy invaded the US, they would have had no chance, what the US doesn't realise, Britain was at war with the Spanish and France at the same time in 1776, it's truly amazing back then, what we did, coming from such a small island. 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧❤️
Don't forget, we got bullied and invaded a lot before all that, not to mention all the infighting before we got organised
The British were a conquered slave nation for over a millennia, starting with the Romans, then the Danes, the French. It's no wonder that Our national anthem is 'Britain never again will be enslaved' or the new version 'Britain never, never, never will be enslaved'. I prefer the original as we should remember our past and how high we rose from our lowest point and how much we changed the world for the better because of it. When we broke free we were like the bullied kid who went to the gym and found steroids, we didn't invade to conquer we went to get the resources we needed to defend ourselves and to stop slavery across the world.
Americans are so obsessed defining the UK by empire (which British people actually don't do), which is why they endlessly request videos like this. And of course they always reduce the UK to England as well, confusing the terms English and British.
And they never look at how many countries the US has had troops in, including right at this moment. And that's in the very short history that they define themselves by.
The US actually defines itself by military might now way way more than the UK does. And they think other places must be like them.
You didn't 'Kick our Butts' in 1812, that was the year the Royal Navy sailed up the Potomac and burned Washington, forcing the U.S. to sue for peace!
Disappointed we didn't collect the full set. 😪
The Americans couldn’t have managed to kick the British out without the help of France 🇫🇷 look it up guys. 🇬🇧
we the fucking kings! lets gooo hahaha our ancestors are absolute legends
There is a famous saying, The sun never sets on the British Empire. At one point we literally had control of a country in every time zone on the planet.
Technically it still doesn't 😏
yep, we picked on the French a lot. It's the naval history side of things when the Royal Navy start getting stuck in where it gets a little amusing. The running joke was that the French Naval dockyards may as well have worked for the British as the Royal Navy kept nicking the French ships. We even had an Enterprise before USN even existed and we nicked it from the French too 😂
The main thing that allowed the British Empire to grow to such a size and then maintain it was the Royal Navy and the merchant fleet. The British Empire also had a habit of building infrastructure everywhere they went in order to make the flow of trade and commerce much more efficient. It was however the size and expense of the British Empire that brought Britain to the brink of bankruptcy after WW1 but even at the start of WW2 the Royal Navy was STILL the largest navy on the planet. It took the industrial might of a really pissed off USA to finally overtake the Royal Navy in number of hulls during WW2 to take that top spot.
Britain made a lot more money from Jamaica than it did from the American colonies, so it wasn't really worth throwing it's full weight into the Continental Civil War.
I can see many people commenting the same thing, but please react to the greatest raid of all time. Shows you the British moral and why they could achieve things like this
It is a source of pride as a British person that we ruled over this many!
The whole world was doing the same thing and Britain was just the best doing it 💯
The world wouldnt be the way it is now without it.
You have to remember there was no telly in those days, it was something to do I suppose... :D
I respect Hawaii for flying the British flag
We were only calling by for a cuppa tea
England also had been invaded so many times in the past and its that reason that we now have the English language we have today.
We've run out of new places to invade and will be revisiting a few old faves.
Please tidy your porches and await the arrival of our scarlet tunic'd representatives.
To be accurate, Americans were still British until the end of the war of independence. Once they were American they lost to the British in 1812.
It's worth mentioning that a lot of these places were lawless third-world poverty stricken countries that were raised up to modern (for the time) standards and made wealthy. It's also worth mentioning that a lot of these places have descended back to lawlessness and poverty and brought back slavery and the like since 'winning' their freedom. This comment will attract some hate but the truth is often painful.
I worked with a (then) Rhodesian Woman in the Late 1980's just b4 it was about to become Zimbabwe and she told me that Country would collapse from being "The Bread Basket Of Africa" and it did under Robert Mugabe...
@@OneTrueScotsman What a weird thought, you should keep your dark inner beliefs to yourself.
You should watch Al Murray explaining the countries we’ve “conquered “, sorry I meant lent our expertise to.
irak is the original spelling
From Dutch Irak, from Arabic الْعِرَاق (al-ʕirāq, “Iraq”), of uncertain derivation. Medieval Arabic uses 'Iraq' as a geographical term for the area in the south and center of the modern Iraq.
Iraq with a Q is the english version
Ireland wasn’t ruled by the ‘British from 1169 - 1921’. It was ruled by England 1169 - 1707 and then by the U.K. 1707 - 1921.
Q: How many countries did Scotland invade before forming the union with England in 1707?
A: 1, Northumbria in 1039.
I'm a Brit but the people that did this were as much our ancestors as they were many Americans.
Rule britania, britania rules the waves, very proud of this little island of mine and before anyone complains that was the world back then we just decided to be the final boss music, let's not forget we ended slavery aswell for ourselves and other countries we lost thousands trying to stop it
We invaded the world looking for spices but flatly refused to use any of them.
Did we not use them to clean stuff instead?
You have to remember with the early dates such as Irelands 1169 that England itself was not very old. England, Britain and the UK exist as an accumulation of amalgamated kingdoms and lands. Ireland and the parts of France were therefore not very different from any other parts of the UK or channel Islands today. Nationalism didnt really exist as we know it now. It was simply about the allegiance of local lords to kings and boundaries existed to define jurisdiction. It was a feudal system and ordinary people only cared about the lord they were bound to who probably helds lands in diverse areas of Britain. DIvisions with Ireland were really only seeded with the division of religeon started wih Henry V111 and exacerbated by Cromwells invasion to stop Royalists using Irish troops. After that date catholics were restricted in civil rights throughout the empire due to the instruction from the pope /catholic church to undermine protestant rule. Even so, the rebellion in 1916 was not supported by the irish population until the leaders were executed. This video also has a number of faults and omissions
It’s in our blood. Britain has Roman vikings Norman’s and Saxons . Warrior nation lads 👍
Norman/Flemish
Normans in the south, flemish in the north
Jeremy Clarkson..How hard it is to win the VC
You MUST watch this..its an outstanding piece of television and history!
As a Dane, they may have used their Navy to do a drive by on our capital when Napoleon was doing his thing but I think it's fair to say that taking over their country, enabling their only King to be given the moniker 'Great', naming hundreds of places and adding a ton of words to their language - we came out on top in terms of who kicked whose ass in terms of history. Angles, Jutes, Danes (formed of the Angles and Jutes in the following era) and Normans (Danes that'd conquered northern France) all dipped their wick in the British rose and had a lasting influence. Albeit we know our place now lol.
Edit: Britain Vs France - imagine if Russia and the United States only had 20 miles of water between them, press play..
We would happily have accepted your words without the invasion. Borrowing words is what we do best, that's why we have at least five words for everything and the full dictionary takes up a whole shelf.
@@radman8321 fair fair. Sadly Dk is pretty much a sandbank. We were mostly farmers. England was like the promised land for those second and third sons that weren't getting the family farm. And come on, without the invasion there wouldn't be places with names like Cleethorpes, Grimsby or.. mm yeh like I said, fair fair..
We only wanted to stop the French getting their hands on your navy. We asked you to surrender it to british custody temporarily. You refused, Npoleon was coming for it, so we had to forcibly remove it. Because it became a fight, the ships were taken as prizes and you never got them back and Copenhagen was partly destroyed. Should have just let us look after them for a couple of years. Same thing happened to the French in WW2. We had to sink some of their ships because Hitler wanted them and the French refused to let us keep them safe.
Danish DNA is very strong in my wife's and my family ranging from 23% to 38%, so they definitely dipped their wick in the UK. Maybe we should blame the Danes for it all.
Britain has never been invaded since 1066!!! The days of the Viking raiding parties were over!! 🇬🇧
Americans i know you dont get taught real histroy so this may help - in 1776 you were only fighting a small percentage of under equipped British solider. The British were busy fighting much bigger wars aka the French and the Spanish at the same time as well as a bit of Mexico, so the Americans used that as their chance to strike, if the British had their full army and navy the USA would still be 100% British
Name a War you've Won without us since your Independence...
To save you time, the answer is 0 😉
Next question re those brave colonists 'kicking our butts' all by themselves... ever wondered why pretty much every town in the US has a street named Lafayette? 😉😋
Spain 1898 springs to mind.
@@chrismackett9044 Touché 🤣
I stand corrected. Apart from that one in a Quarter Millenium though? 😉
Actually Britain was also invaded & occupied many times, vikings, Saxons, Romans who bought many nationalities from their empire as soldiers with them, the French & the Spanish tried but failed, we British are genetically a mixture of of all of these as is the English language, perhaps our early history of being invaded set us off on the path of war & domination. I don’t feel guilt for my ancestors sins I just pray that the Human Race would now embrace peace!
Well, it's not entirely true, 1776 independence was won by the French, Spanish and Dutch. Lol.
But you can take Credit if you want too looool
So, the British Empire was at it's peak in 1921. At that time, Britain ruled over *big breath* Ireland, Canada, Bermuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Trinidad & Tobago, Honduras, Pitcairn, The Caymen Isles, Jamaica, Grenada, British Virgin Isles, St. Kits & Nevis, Anguilla, Montserrat, Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, St. Lucia, St. Vincent & The Grenadines, The Falkland Isles, South Georgia & The Sandwich Isles, St. Helena, Ascension Isles, Minorca, Gibralta, Malta, Heligoland, Cyprus, Egypt, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, NIgeria, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwae, Zanzibar, South Africa, South-West Africa, Mauritius, Seychelles, Maldives, Oman, Aden, Kuwait, Bahrain, India, Ceylon, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Isles, Gilbert Island, Nauru, Ellis Isles, Fiji, New Hebrides, Western Samoa, Tonga, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, and some territory in Antartica.
The British Empire was known as "the empire on which the sun never sets" because the sun was always shining on at least one territory.
Of the countries above, 53 are in the current commonwealth.
Basically if your near any water you got a visit, Rule Britannia 🇬🇧
In answer to how many countries the British controlled the British Empire was known as "the empire on which the sun never set" because it stretched around the world.
Irak. Original British spelling!
That map at the end - the 'We rule it' map of the world
You didn’t kick our butt The revolutionary war was in effect a civil war one of your generals came from a couple of miles away from where I live!Great channel by the way
As a British guy.. impressive what they done all tho years ago
To be slightly fair, that's just how countries were hundreds of years ago; constantly invading each other and trying to get a piece of each other's pie. There's a reason kings and queens and emperors have gone out of fashion.
Crossed the US in '94 and was amazed about how proud the Americans were of being soundly thrashed in Vietnam by peasants. I am a Londoner it bemused me.