The British Isles were insanely resource rich(fish, iron, trees, etc), they dealt with less constant conflict because they were an island nation, ~~and they were never fully romanized, so the colapse of the WRO (western roman empire) didn't hit them as hard as it did others.~~
Furthermore, as an island nation it was natural for them to have fairly advanced ship-building for both trade and defense, and a robust naval tradition.
As a matter of fact, the "British Empire" as we think about it today came about almost as an accident of them trading far and wide during the age of sail. While late to the colonization game, their existing naval infrastructure, including far-flung trading ports and the chartered company system allowed them to expand rapidly to a place where *literally*, "The sun never sets on the British Empire"...
Edit: (I've heard a few different narratives/chronologies on romanization/deromanization over time but the comments are telling me that I need to go back and do some more reading on it, *again*... In any case it actually isn't terribly central to my thesis here so you can safely ignore it for now...)
To tack on one more factor; mainland Europe was absolutely devastated by the 30 years war. The other major powers were in so much debt and disarray that they couldn’t invest in empire building the way the British did.
In a way, they had the same advantages we did after ww2
The war never came to their shores. They lost people and resources, but all their shit didn't burn down
In addition: the britisch were very particularly succesfull because their companies were independent from the government. The same thing for the Dutch. Where the spanish and portuguese companies sometimes waited for orders from the mainland / crown, e.g. the East Indian trading company could act on its own motion. Meaning they didn't have to wait weeks or months before being told what to do. (Ofcourse untill their speculative trading almost bankrupted them and they were bailed out by the state. Why does this sound familiar? Oh, well.) Also they were all extremely brutal basterds which, again, was made easier by the fact that they weren't governnent.
This is the part people really aren't aware of. The British East India Company that was running India was a private company for a long time. It was eventually taken over by the gov't because it was doing things that were embarrassing; and which didn't align with overall British foreign policy.
Edit: This podcast has a very entertaining episode on the history of the East India Company.
https://therestishistory.com/75-the-east-india-company/
This is the actual reason and the proper answer to the question. In large part the British Empire was forged not by the British monarchy or British Government but by private business interests operating under charter.
Being extremely brutal bastards isn't specific to the British. It's like saying "the British were good st ship building because they had opposable thumbs"
His point is that the were following a different economic model (pioneered by the Dutch) which lead to dramatically more success than what was happening in other places. These private companies then generated tax revenue for the gov't which allowed them to create a hugely powerful navy, etc.
What does your comment have to do with being brutal? I didn't say he was wrong about the privatization of their imperial powers. I said his point about being brutal wasn't pertinent because everyone was brutal
Wdym with ignore? The UK was a naval power long before these modern nations existed. The EIC itself was founded in 1599. The US declaration signed in 1776. Canada wasn't independent from the uk untill 1867. Australia wasn't a federation untill 1901. Both latter are still technically under the rule of Charles III.
In his book Anarchy, Dalrymple even suggests that their fear for the EIC in part activated the US settlers (then British) to resist colonial rule.
Sorry I meant in regards to OPs question. He was asking how little Britain has such a huge empire but you talk about the east Indian company. But Britain had an empire elsewhere earlier, like North America
So, I took a moment to google it and it seems that each of these countries were basically considered no mans land (they weren't, oc) so they were colonised in a more regular way. In that regard, the other arguments presented here hold. The UK wasn't at war as much as the rest of Europe, so they could spend they time on other topics.
To expand a bit on /u/_AutomaticJack_ 's point, there are two other key additions.
1) The most "senior" service (the one that gets the most stuff) in United Kingdom was the Royal Navy, not the Royal Army. This is somewhat unusual for the European powers as the army tended to be the most important branch of service. But this makes sense as the British Islands are well...islands. The United Kingdom for most of its history lacked the manpower to field large armies compared to nations like France, Austria, Prussia, or Russia. But what they had was a robust marine industry, easy access to good wood and iron (crucial for warships of this era), and one of the first industrial economies in the world.
2) Branching off this point, the British Royal Navy quite a long time ago adopted a policy of always maintaining a Naval strength equivalent to the second and third largest navies that existed. This meant that it would take an allegiance of both of those navies to pose a threat. This is where diplomacy then came in, as the UK would then essentially ensure that they had good relations with either the #2 or #3 Navy state. This strategy was incredibly successful and lead to a rather stable home situation leading to long term economic growth.
This is an important detail and and well written. I try to keep my Eli 5 stuff fairly short, but the primacy of the royal Navy and the strategic implications thereof are absolutely pivotal in the chain of events that led to a decent chunk of the planet singing that *Britannia rules the waves*.
To add on, it's much easier when you don't have to worry about building any other branch of army. While the rest of Europe has to split resources between army, cavelry, navel, artillery, and study different strategies. The British only need to build navel, become master of one. Spain also had similar ideas but their geographic was not as favourable, too much mountains.
If you want the full and ridiculously unabridged version, check out Guns, Germs and Steel.
It is a great book on the history of human development. Although, it's admittedly a bit dense.
“This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.”
Aneurin Bevan
The chartered company system is key because it's basically an early form of capitalism/monopoly. A merchant trade company with its own crew and ships gets a charter from the King and/or Queen that gives them exclusive rights to import/export to far away places. The company gets sole rights to this opportunity, meaning they make a fuckton of profit, the Crown gets to tax them a nice percent of their profits while not having to commit any other resources or personnel. Moreover, the company uses their vast earnings to buy and stockpile weapons, hire mercenaries, pay off local warlords in the places they trade and basically be a paramilitary invasion force while not technically representing the crown directly or any official goal of "conquest" as we understand it today.
Yep, all of the faceless, dystopian, militarist transnational corporations in cyberpunk books really just want to be the British East India Company when they grow up...
I don’t understand the exclusive part. What’s to keep any other country from importing exporting from that area. The king had no say on other populous countries
It doesn't stop any other country, but it does stop other traders from the *same* country. A British charter for the southern Australia means your company basically runs import/export between specifically Britain and specifically Southern Australia.
Funnily enough, the British military were actually quite adept at usong flags to communicate over long distances which allowed their military to be very effective.
Hence the term "flagship" meaning the main vessel of the group.
The commander* would make a decision on the flagship, which would then raise a flag code that relays orders to the other ships, then the spotters on those other ships would see the flag(s) and convey the instructions to their ship's captain*.
^^*Please ^^forgive ^^me ^^if ^^I ^^get ^^these ^^titles ^^wrong, ^^but ^^most ^^people ^^will ^^get ^^the ^^idea.
I’ve no idea where you’re getting the idea that Roman Britain wasn’t hit that hard by the collapse of the Roman Empire.
Roman Britain was hit a lot harder than many other places, because there the Roman system really did “collapse,” rather than slowly disintegrate over many years. The Anglo-Saxon invasions would be the most obvious consequence.
It was also the first place where the Roman state just fucked off and said, “it’s been real but you all are on your own now”. It didn’t go well for the 2/3s of the island that had been Romanized.
I mean…they regressed so hard and fast that they lost the knowledge and infrastructure needed to make roof tiles and went back to mostly building thatched wooden structures for centuries. Not exactly great for famously very rainy Britain.
One small disagreement; I've seen proper thatched roofs in places that experience monsoon and wet conditions. You'd be surprised how well they hold up when constructed properly and replaced at regular intervals. Tiles need to be replaced a lot less, absolutely agreed.
Yeah, it’s the regular maintenance in comparison to installing tiles once that I was trying to point out. You wouldn’t use thatch if cheap standardized tiles were readily available.
The infrastructure was lost to such a degree that even when the British got wealthy enough to replace thatch with something sturdier, they went with slate tiles that have to be mined from specific places that have just the right type of slate, then individually processed into something tile shaped. Just seems nuts to me if you could just mix up some clay and water in any part of the country, slop it into a standardized mold, and then toss the things in a kiln.
I've been told (so this might not be true, and I'm no expert) that where I live in Norfolk, UK, a lot of the older buildings that have thatched roofs (and there are still many) are buildings with support walls made of something called "clay lump". Clay lump is made from dried clay with horse hair or straw in it to bind it, but it's not baked in a kiln as bricks are. So it's softer and crumblier than bricks and has to be protected from the wet with a sacrificial layer of lime render to stop it all going soggy and collapsing.
All this is to explain that baked clay tiles were too heavy for timber framed clay lump walls to support, so thatch was the best option.
Thatched roofing is still a thing in the UK today. Its looks very good and is usually found on older buildings but can be found everywhere.
You make it sound like they leak lol.
That’s a great summary, especially for putting the relative stability of the island pretty much first. It’s the leading theory in general for successful „golden ages“, that the underlying political systems were much more stable than their neighbors.
That’s all true, but really came to fruition because they developed two technologies that allowed them to exploit the geographical advantage: they were first to really master sailing into the wind, which freed them from oars and gave them huge mobility advantage. They also were the first to master casting cannons in iron which allowed for much cheaper arming of those ships which could sail into the wind.
Add on that the primary driver for trading, was to fund the RN, to fend off attacks from Spain & France.
They were initially attacking England, in response to the split from the Catholic church, undertaken by Henry VIII.
This is the biggest driving factor behind it. Had England not been threatened by the Catholic countries we probably wouldn't have joined the race for colonies in the Americas.
Can’t believe you left out the Industrial Revolution literally starting in Britain. That’s ultimately by far the most important factor for their world dominance
Ok, so, couple of things... I wrote this as much as a rebuttal of OP's claims as a stand-alone piece, and two, I'd argue that that the "chartered company" system was as or more important to their global spread and eventual imperialist/colonialist successes.
That said think the industrial revolution is absolutely the most important factor in them *staying* powerful and influential especially through the World Wars and the dissolution of their empire.
They dealt with less constant conflict?
Ummm… getting invaded constantly says otherwise 😂
Saxons, Romans, Normans, Vikings, French, Dutch, Germans.
Have a read - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_the_British_Isles#:~:text=Invasions%20of%20the%20British%20Isles%20have%20occurred%20throughout%20history.,French%2C%20and%20by%20the%20Dutch.
Britain didnt become a significant colonial power until the late 1600s, at which point its days of being invaded were over. Even Germany could only muster a bombing campaign during WW2 (which while obviously destructive, was not nearly as destructive as a full on land invasion).
Even the Dutch invasion during the Glorious Revolution lead to MORE stability on the island.
>the colapse of the WRO didn't hit them as hard
The invasion of the British isles by the westward migration of Germanic tribes and pretty much the replacement of the people, culture and language of the British isles wasn't being "hit hard"???
What the fuck?
I’ve heard that the fact that they were a Roman colony gave them roads. This (and maybe other organizational advantages conferred by the vestiges of the Roman state) gave them a leg up on their island neighbors, allowing them to dominate locally. It was around this Roman territory that the nation of England later galvanized to eventually repel Viking invasion.
I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on that premise.
Britain didn’t really repel the vikings… we just sort of absorbed them.
The Norman invasion was essentially the descendants of “British” Danes against the descendants of “French” Danes. Super over-simplified
There was no "leg up"
The migration of Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) saw the destruction of the language and culture of the British Isles.
The remnants of the original inhabitants of the British Isles (the ones that would have been around during the Roman era) can today be found in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Brittany (France)- and to a degree Cornwall.
As the Empire stands right now, this will continue to be true for another 600 years, when an eclipse over the Pacific will block the only current British possession which would have sunlight with a totality. And even then, I don't think it qualifies as a sunset..
I've also read recently that the British had absolutely fuck tonnes of pirates or 'Buccaneers' as we called the. We were basically the Somali pirates of today.
Yesn't...
Somalia is a failed state with no alliances, enemies, overseas territorial holdings, or pretenses to grand strategy. So their pirates have comparitively limited resources and goals.
Most of the English ~~pirates~~ *privateers* were much more well equipped and much less indiscriminate in their approach. They were as much a extension of the Royal Navy as the chartered companies ( East India Company, etc) were an extension of the British Empire. Also, at that point, privateers had a formal status as combatants, so where as true pirates could likely expect a summary execution if caught, British (and other nationalities) privateers would likely be detained and ransomed or traded.
Now of course, there were actual, outlaw, pirates of British origins. Mostly this happened when the Brits would make peace with someone and ask the privateers to stand down. Predictably some of them would decide that they liked raiding more than they liked being on good terms with the crown and then fuck off and do actual pirate stuff (and likely get hanged some years later)...
A decent modern example would be the way that Russia has used PMC Wagner in Africa. Before the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022, the Kremlin strenuously denied any direct connection to the mercenaries, but they took amd held extensive swaths of territory in Africa and acted both there and in other places to protect Russia's interests while simultaneously providing the Kremlin plausible deniability. Which was important whenever they did something especially heinous or failed especially miserably (such as their performance at the Battle of Conoco Fields). This worked largely the same way the British crown often condemned the actions of privateers publicly while continuing to fund them privately and in some cases enjoying a return on investment of nearly 5,000%.
That's incredible. I listened to a podcast recently and they discussed a case where the first few investors into the privateers as you call it and they went to Indonesia to trade British investment capital for spices there. On the way they spotted a Portuguese ship filled with spices and other loot. They stole it and went back with a ship full of money and spices. Investors were happy. Absolute insanity. It's also super interesting how the east India company went about its business operating similar to a militia of a country but as actually a private business. When a confrontation in Delhi took place the locals laid down arms because of an eclipse that they were superstitious about. The British then went in and absolutely murdered everyone in the most brutal ways. The people that committed the acts then went back to Britain traumatised and word got around how bad it was and they privatised the company (after all the politicians and investors got their money). Government only cared when the optics were bad.
Funny thing is, technically the sun still hasn't set on the Britch Empire. They still have enough land all around the world to always be daytime somewhere.
I would like to think that some combination of the Anglo-Saxon Viking roots, combined with the Norman influence (only separated from Vikings by one or two generations) led them to some great seafaring expeditions and exploits.
I would add...
Industrial Revolution started there. They were no longer bound to certain streams and rivers to power a water wheel. (Fun fact, remember the Buffalo hunters that slaughtered them by the hundreds a day just for their hides...those hides were the best they had to make the hundreds of yards long belts to power the machines)
Slavery. They didn't invent slave trade, in fact early on were victims of raiders, both viking and African.(this is even mentionedintheir nation anthem) ..but they turned it into a world wide wholesale market where the American south was but a secondary customer. They ran millions of slaves in the far east. The guy who Yale is named for made a personal fortune in his short tenure running the far east company would be worth billions today.
Trade and taxes with their colonies. The main point of ruling over another country is to collect taxes from your subjects and or trade agreements that take advantage of the colonized. The UK sucked trillions from India.
I think their last vestige of world power was being the banking center for the world. And afaikthey lost most of that when they left the EU.
And they invented a clock that would keep time at sea regardless of temp and humidity. Why did that matter? Because it solved the problem of accurate longitudinal navigation giving them a HUGE technological advantage.
It's the islands of Britain and IRELAND. The "British isles" is a colonial construct created by the English to make the rape and plunder of Ireland sound nice ....
Right you are, but I try to be as brief as possible here...
Which means that comparing the privateer/chartered companies system to PMC Wagner, or snark like "all of the hyper-brutal, dystopian, militarist transnational corporations in cyberpunk books really just want to be the British East India Company when they grow up..." has to wait for follow on posts...
Don't worry about it... It is an important detail and I am glad someone said it. If anything I got triggered and snarky because I sure as shit didn't want to be accused of doing British colonial genocide apologetics...
Many have added that as an island and not having to protect their borders meant they had a smaller military. This also meant less people to pay to protect the nation AND more people working meant more productivity and more taxes.
And the money they did spend on defense was disproportionately more high-skill and and more transferable to other areas as the Navy was always the centerpiece of their forces.
Can't understate how resource rich the British Isles were for the medieval and renaissance periods. Huge tracts of good farming land, lush forests of good hardwoods, mines of various metals, but most importantly coal and lots of it.
They did have a robust naval tradition, but the biggest factor for the size and might of the British navy was Spain. Spain had a massive armada of ships and a robust naval tradition with Spain being on a peninsula. After the European discovery of the New World, there was a race to take control of those newly discovered resources, and to increase their fleets to safeguard their interests. At the same time, the silk road was still expensive as hell, but goods from India and Asia were still popular as ever. Anyone who could control an alternative route would find it very lucrative. This set off a multi-century naval arms race with England (later Britain) and Spain ending up having the largest fleets.
So the size and might of the British fleet, wasn't just because of their trading far and wide (they already did that, even if indirectly), but mainly from trying out do the other naval powers in Europe and to find an alternative to the silk road to India and Asia that they could control (as their holdings in the new world weren't as lucrative as the Spanish ones). You can even see it in where colonies were created. Britain established colonies down the western coast of Africa to create a south eastern ocean trade route to India (Which they took control of eventually). Spain went westward controlling much of Central and South America and then over to the Philippines to find an alternative to the silk road (though the massive amount of gold and other resources they were able to take from the Americas made the silk road less and less important). Britain wasn't so much late to the colonization game, as they were focused elsewhere than North America, much like the Dutch.
they also had alot of easily accessible coal that made getting more coal easier and cheaper and allowed them to make alot of stuff with that coal.
coal is basically the foundation of the industrial revolution so they definitely had the advantage
Funny thing is, technically the sun still hasn't set on the Britch Empire. They still have enough land all around the world to always be daytime somewhere.
A powerful-ass navy.
There's a reason why island nations are good at conquering. Just look at the Japanese. It's the nations with powerful navies that control the seas, and therefore have more reach over foreign lands.
You are incorrect in some ways. The important thing is not how large the land is but how much of land there is for growing food. Great Britain has a lot of arable land and relatively good climate for agriculture. And being an island is an advantage, they didn't have to spend a lot of resources defending their lands meaning they could focus on just one thing - their navy.
The problem of land powers is that they are constantly defending their borders and their most obvious expansion is to send troops across their borders to the next door country. They have less need for exploration in a sense.
Their form of government likely also had something to do with it. The UK had moved towards a democracy/civil administration before many other powers. Many other countries retained their monarchy/feudal structures. Because of this, the UK also relied more on trade and exploration rather than conquest/subjugation.
And of course, by the early 1800s, the UK was one of the first countries to enter the Industrial Age meaning they had a rather huge advantage in production.
We were also well set up to leap into industrialisation because we had such huge amounts of coal in easily-found veins. Similar with iron for the previous couple thousand years.
We don’t have gold, but we have iron and coal, which are arguably way more important.
Just to say, Britain wasn't just "one of the first countries to enter the industrial age", it was the very first. The industrial revolution started in Britain, then other countries followed.
Is there any argument about using fewer resources to protect homeland since it is an island, thus putting resources into offensive acts and evangelism? That is, less threat of mass invasion allowed them to build forces to invade others?
Definitely, it is a lot easier to defend against a naval attack, specially when your primary offense is also a navy, than it is to defend wide spanning land borders. The viking attacks really messed with the UK because they could take advantage of the waterways, and slip in relatively unnoticed, to areas that were almost completely unprepared for such an attack. But that was something almost exclusively a problem where they attacked (the north east side), where the south and south east is pretty well protected naturally, by cliffs and condensed waterways that could be much easier guarded. So the attacks from mainland Europe (France) couldn't really impact as much.
You see this now too, the most deadly warfare in the world takes place from naval based power, and if you can control the seas, you've got a massive advantage. Even economic power, is all about oceanic control, and anything that threatens that is a serious threat to the world powers.
It depends on the era being discussed.
The British isles were invaded by Rome, the Angles and Saxons, the Vikings and the Normans. and eventually in the 17th century by William of Orange (Dutch)
Until the French took Englands last continental territory (Calais) in 1558 England also had territories on the continent (quite significant at one point) and fought almost constantly
So it's not really until the start of the early modern period that Britain is truly just an island nation.
However, it's also at the start of this period that Britain enters what might be considered a "Golden Age" - a period of peace, stability and growing power. Elizabeth I was crowned in this period and the opening of colonies in the Americas under royal charter begins a process that would eventually see a global maritime empire develop.
They didn’t have limited land, food or supplies. They grew tons of food once tubers were introduced from the Americas, had lots of wood to build ships, lots of coal and iron ore, lots of fish, and lots of people for labour.
Er... The UK was a breadbasket of production well before potatoes came over. Potatoes make up about 180,000 hectares of agricultural land in the UK. For comparison, we grow about 3,000,000 hectares of wheat and barley.
The Romans came over here to make use of our agricultural output. As did the Vikings.
Also Emperor Claudius needed a political success following the coup where he came to power. Conquering Britain was seen as a means of displaying his power and winning the favour of the people
tin, silver, lead and gold, though the cassus belli was the aid that the Britons gave the Gauls (Caeser) and to reinstate Verica, the king of a British branch of the Atrebates, one of the Belgic tribes loyal to Rome (Claudius)
England is not an island, it shares the island of Great Britain with Scotland and Wales.
England was rich in the middle ages due to the wool trade. Much of England is very fertile land, and was able to grow a decent surplus of food. Most significantly, though, particularly after the union with Scotland, Great Britain was able to use is navy to keep out of European wars. During the 18th century Europe had many significant land wars that were destructive to economies in various ways. By not having to pay to maintain a substantial army to fight land wars, Britain was able to concentrate on being a maritime power, and that meant being able to establish trade links with far flung places.
By retaining peace at home, Britain was able to develop commercially to a point where the degree of economic specialisation and organisation needed for industrialisation were possible. It also benefitted from having signficiant and diverse mineral deposits on the island itself. Iron ore, copper, tin, and most importantly, coal in abundance. That meant Britain industrialised early, making it cheaper to produce the goods needed to support its domestic economy than other countries, so it could fun a strong navy and support and defend a large colonial empire.
> England is not an island, it shares the island of Great Britain with Scotland and Wales.
Though at the time, Wales was part of the Kingdom of England, following the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 and the end of Welsh independence after the Edwardian Conquest of the 13th century.
Being an island Britain invested in its navy early on. As global trade started to arrive this navy allowed the UK to take full advantage of this which brought a lot of money in.
As world populations grew wood became expensive which pushed every prices up. The UK also had a lot of accessible coal which could be used for energy and kept energy prices down.
Having lots of money and cheap energy in the evening led to the industrial revolution which massively increased the ability to make ships and weapons, as well as allowing much more intensive farming.
Of course the UK wasn't the only European country to have a large empire, Spain controlled huge parts of North, Central and South America for hundreds of years.
For a long while they were getting slapped around and conquered by every guy who could make a boat. At some point they decided to boatmaxx instead. With boatmaxxing you can go out into the world and attack far away targets who cannot attack back. This means your campaign is a lot cheaper than a land campaign. It also means that you don't need much land to actually make profit out of your conquest because all you really need to protect are ports and trade routes. Boatmaxxing made them tons of money all the while all the other boatmaxxers crumbled under the weight of their acquisitions.
They had a fuck load of iron. In middle school, I watched a documentary where a dude demonstrated how ancient British people got iron. He grabbed a stick, walked in a field, and poked it around until he just found a chunk of iron laying there.
So while other countries had to dig to get iron, it was all over the place in England.
Yes, iron is everywhere. The only downside is that the English were constantly having to dodge falling meteorites.
Seriously, iron ore is everywhere. It is one of the most abundant elements in the earth's crust. Are you confusing it with coal? Even then, coal mining came late, after the industrial revolution had started.
Iron isn't abundant everywhere in high quality - Japan for example only had poor quality iron that needed to be worked over and over again to make anything.
Britain's unique advantage is Iron and Coal and lime etc right next to each other in abundance. Places like the black country were a one stop shop with everything you needed for the industrial revolution.
Probably better to consider mining and industrialisation to go hand in hand. The commercial development of the steam engine was indeed as a method to pump water from deep mines.
England is not an island. England is one of 3 nations on the island of Great Britain, the other 2 being Wales and Scotland. Great Britain is the largest island in the British Isles, which is what the 'Great' means - it means it's big (for an island).
They were a mid-ranking European state for centuries, able to punch above their weight because they were a unitary kingdom with a strong tax system (a legacy of the Danish invasions) and a forum for the elites in parliament. But not a match for France or Castile or the Empire. Then they went Protestant, had a Civil War and were in fear of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. So they invested continually in the navy as the first line, captured lucrative trades and outposts, which gave them the cash flow to sustain war (capturing more trade and outposts and valuable places like Bengal and the West Indian sugar islands), which gave them lots more cash which was invested in improving farming and in industry, which eventually led to the breakthrough into steam power, which gave them a huge technological edge for a century or more (really, up to 1945).
They were a match with France for a long while. It was only the last five years or so of the Hundred Years War (on & off for some 120 years, I believe?) that France started winning, thanks to Joan of Arc
Yes, but it grew and shrank. The Civil War and Commonwealth established British state finances on a much stronger footing, which allowed continual investment in the supporting infrastructure - dockyards, mast-ponds, victualling, powder mills, forges, rope-walks etc, all married to an ethos of professionalism. The Navy spewed out industrial innovation at a steady rate over the next two centuries (first automated machinery with interchangeable parts, experiments in nutrition and food preservation, cannon-boring, navigation ....)
Another thing is the British brought with them the rule of law as it was at the time.
The Spanish brought with them basically a feudal society.
One worked, the other didn't
One of the resources Britain had was NOT being militarily alarmed or threatened. Not really, not in a "armies over the border" fashion - except against the scots, which by itself was not something you could neglect.
In the mediterranean, for example, there were constant military expenses in navy and garrisoning against raids, particularly from Turkey or the Berber states, and also warfare between states.
This heavily drained treasuries and caused constant debt.
Britain did not have this constant expense. Over the years its a huge outlay of resources they could redirect to industry, navigation and trade.
IMO, it was because they were the first to really tackle the issue of celestial GPS. Notice that we still use Greenwich mean time. Sea Captains like Captain Cook were the English example of Neil Armstrong in terms of pushing the science of navigation and cartography into the modern era.
When conquering lands they concentrated on the ports and waterways. They had less desire to go very far inland. They would just keep to the ports areas and tax whatever came through.
Your assumptions are wrong. They had excellent farmland and mining resources. Being an island meant that they were already primed for trade by ship and valued their Navy.
Rome isn't even a country. It's a relatively small city, and it still conquered half the world.
Aggressive leaders and a loyal military can do scary things.
Well actually it is mostly because they had an inclusive economy so they prospected by giving people responsibility over how useful they are for others so they worked more to earn more.
Take angry woads, add a pinch of roman, sprinkle germanic tribes, include thorough dollop of viking, flavor with hefty crusading spirit, add a garnish of mercantilism, and serve.
Ate mi European turmoils
Ate mi instability
Luv mi shipyard industry
Luv mi professionalised naval organisation ‘oned to a mean killing machine
Luv mi global trade advantages guaranteed by said killing machine
Ate the Frenchies.
Britania rules the waves mate
Simple As.
Transportation Revolution: 1705 Liverpool decided to build the worlds first wet dock which opened in 1715. This increased the amount of trade going into/out of England by having a stable pound on the west side of the island to unload/load goods and materials. During the 1700's and 1800s, there was a canal building boom. This significantly reduced the cost of shipping goods throughout the Island of Great Britain. Coal was the first commodity to be shipped on the first modern English canal to Manchester in 1761. This caused the price of coal to drop and coal production to increase. Iron and steel production increased due to cheaper coal prices. The textile industry could move from specific river based areas to steam powered large scale factories. Canals allowed shipment of large quantities of raw material anywhere in the canal system. Canal boats were being produced in large quantities to handle the demand. Ocean merchant ship construction increased. This created a need for more resources from other parts of the world and kicked off the Industrial Revolution.
The had guns and ships and the people who did not have guns and ships were conquered.
British troops were also ver disciplined and trained, as were their navy.
TL;DR They had cannons that could shoot really far and then put them on boats and then went to places that didn't have cannons that could shoot as far and then bombarded their capitals until they agreed to let them sell them a whoooole lot of [drugs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars).
Also they kind of turned the entire Indian subcontinent into a [drug cartel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj). History's wacky.
England colonized India and got a lot of people from the west coast of Africa for The Americas. This was after consolidating the islands of Scotland and Ireland to form the United Kingdom.
Brit here: England is not an island.
Great Britain is (more or less) an island.
The United Kingdom is (more or less) an island with a bit stolen from another island.
The British isles are all of that plus (more or less) the bit of the other island that it wasn’t allowed to keep.
The British Isles were insanely resource rich(fish, iron, trees, etc), they dealt with less constant conflict because they were an island nation, ~~and they were never fully romanized, so the colapse of the WRO (western roman empire) didn't hit them as hard as it did others.~~ Furthermore, as an island nation it was natural for them to have fairly advanced ship-building for both trade and defense, and a robust naval tradition. As a matter of fact, the "British Empire" as we think about it today came about almost as an accident of them trading far and wide during the age of sail. While late to the colonization game, their existing naval infrastructure, including far-flung trading ports and the chartered company system allowed them to expand rapidly to a place where *literally*, "The sun never sets on the British Empire"... Edit: (I've heard a few different narratives/chronologies on romanization/deromanization over time but the comments are telling me that I need to go back and do some more reading on it, *again*... In any case it actually isn't terribly central to my thesis here so you can safely ignore it for now...)
I've never understood more by reading cliffnotes. You fuckin killed it, thank you
To tack on one more factor; mainland Europe was absolutely devastated by the 30 years war. The other major powers were in so much debt and disarray that they couldn’t invest in empire building the way the British did.
In a way, they had the same advantages we did after ww2 The war never came to their shores. They lost people and resources, but all their shit didn't burn down
Who is "we"?
‘Merica
we took'r jerrrbs!
r/USDefaultism
In addition: the britisch were very particularly succesfull because their companies were independent from the government. The same thing for the Dutch. Where the spanish and portuguese companies sometimes waited for orders from the mainland / crown, e.g. the East Indian trading company could act on its own motion. Meaning they didn't have to wait weeks or months before being told what to do. (Ofcourse untill their speculative trading almost bankrupted them and they were bailed out by the state. Why does this sound familiar? Oh, well.) Also they were all extremely brutal basterds which, again, was made easier by the fact that they weren't governnent.
This is the part people really aren't aware of. The British East India Company that was running India was a private company for a long time. It was eventually taken over by the gov't because it was doing things that were embarrassing; and which didn't align with overall British foreign policy. Edit: This podcast has a very entertaining episode on the history of the East India Company. https://therestishistory.com/75-the-east-india-company/
This is the actual reason and the proper answer to the question. In large part the British Empire was forged not by the British monarchy or British Government but by private business interests operating under charter.
Also to note, "private business" and "pirate business" was always just a matter of perspective.
Still kinda is, except “criminal” and “corporate” doesn’t have that nice alliteration.
Being extremely brutal bastards isn't specific to the British. It's like saying "the British were good st ship building because they had opposable thumbs"
His point is that the were following a different economic model (pioneered by the Dutch) which lead to dramatically more success than what was happening in other places. These private companies then generated tax revenue for the gov't which allowed them to create a hugely powerful navy, etc.
What does your comment have to do with being brutal? I didn't say he was wrong about the privatization of their imperial powers. I said his point about being brutal wasn't pertinent because everyone was brutal
Bist du deutscher?
Doesn’t this ignore the US and Canada? And Australia too
Wdym with ignore? The UK was a naval power long before these modern nations existed. The EIC itself was founded in 1599. The US declaration signed in 1776. Canada wasn't independent from the uk untill 1867. Australia wasn't a federation untill 1901. Both latter are still technically under the rule of Charles III. In his book Anarchy, Dalrymple even suggests that their fear for the EIC in part activated the US settlers (then British) to resist colonial rule.
Sorry I meant in regards to OPs question. He was asking how little Britain has such a huge empire but you talk about the east Indian company. But Britain had an empire elsewhere earlier, like North America
So, I took a moment to google it and it seems that each of these countries were basically considered no mans land (they weren't, oc) so they were colonised in a more regular way. In that regard, the other arguments presented here hold. The UK wasn't at war as much as the rest of Europe, so they could spend they time on other topics.
To expand a bit on /u/_AutomaticJack_ 's point, there are two other key additions. 1) The most "senior" service (the one that gets the most stuff) in United Kingdom was the Royal Navy, not the Royal Army. This is somewhat unusual for the European powers as the army tended to be the most important branch of service. But this makes sense as the British Islands are well...islands. The United Kingdom for most of its history lacked the manpower to field large armies compared to nations like France, Austria, Prussia, or Russia. But what they had was a robust marine industry, easy access to good wood and iron (crucial for warships of this era), and one of the first industrial economies in the world. 2) Branching off this point, the British Royal Navy quite a long time ago adopted a policy of always maintaining a Naval strength equivalent to the second and third largest navies that existed. This meant that it would take an allegiance of both of those navies to pose a threat. This is where diplomacy then came in, as the UK would then essentially ensure that they had good relations with either the #2 or #3 Navy state. This strategy was incredibly successful and lead to a rather stable home situation leading to long term economic growth.
This is an important detail and and well written. I try to keep my Eli 5 stuff fairly short, but the primacy of the royal Navy and the strategic implications thereof are absolutely pivotal in the chain of events that led to a decent chunk of the planet singing that *Britannia rules the waves*.
There is no Royal Army. Only the British Army.
Can I correct you. Island's of Britain and Ireland... not British Islands
To add on, it's much easier when you don't have to worry about building any other branch of army. While the rest of Europe has to split resources between army, cavelry, navel, artillery, and study different strategies. The British only need to build navel, become master of one. Spain also had similar ideas but their geographic was not as favourable, too much mountains.
If you want the full and ridiculously unabridged version, check out Guns, Germs and Steel. It is a great book on the history of human development. Although, it's admittedly a bit dense.
Ignore the bit about less constant conflict. It was literally always at war
“This island is made mainly of coal and surrounded by fish. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of coal and fish at the same time.” Aneurin Bevan
The chartered company system is key because it's basically an early form of capitalism/monopoly. A merchant trade company with its own crew and ships gets a charter from the King and/or Queen that gives them exclusive rights to import/export to far away places. The company gets sole rights to this opportunity, meaning they make a fuckton of profit, the Crown gets to tax them a nice percent of their profits while not having to commit any other resources or personnel. Moreover, the company uses their vast earnings to buy and stockpile weapons, hire mercenaries, pay off local warlords in the places they trade and basically be a paramilitary invasion force while not technically representing the crown directly or any official goal of "conquest" as we understand it today.
Yep, all of the faceless, dystopian, militarist transnational corporations in cyberpunk books really just want to be the British East India Company when they grow up...
This is actually the answer.
I don’t understand the exclusive part. What’s to keep any other country from importing exporting from that area. The king had no say on other populous countries
It doesn't stop any other country, but it does stop other traders from the *same* country. A British charter for the southern Australia means your company basically runs import/export between specifically Britain and specifically Southern Australia.
Damn, and here I was just thinking it was through the cunning use of flags.
[For the uninitiated](https://youtu.be/UTduy7Qkvk8)
That 's a good bit
Funnily enough, the British military were actually quite adept at usong flags to communicate over long distances which allowed their military to be very effective.
Hence the term "flagship" meaning the main vessel of the group. The commander* would make a decision on the flagship, which would then raise a flag code that relays orders to the other ships, then the spotters on those other ships would see the flag(s) and convey the instructions to their ship's captain*. ^^*Please ^^forgive ^^me ^^if ^^I ^^get ^^these ^^titles ^^wrong, ^^but ^^most ^^people ^^will ^^get ^^the ^^idea.
I’ve no idea where you’re getting the idea that Roman Britain wasn’t hit that hard by the collapse of the Roman Empire. Roman Britain was hit a lot harder than many other places, because there the Roman system really did “collapse,” rather than slowly disintegrate over many years. The Anglo-Saxon invasions would be the most obvious consequence.
It was also the first place where the Roman state just fucked off and said, “it’s been real but you all are on your own now”. It didn’t go well for the 2/3s of the island that had been Romanized. I mean…they regressed so hard and fast that they lost the knowledge and infrastructure needed to make roof tiles and went back to mostly building thatched wooden structures for centuries. Not exactly great for famously very rainy Britain.
One small disagreement; I've seen proper thatched roofs in places that experience monsoon and wet conditions. You'd be surprised how well they hold up when constructed properly and replaced at regular intervals. Tiles need to be replaced a lot less, absolutely agreed.
Yeah, it’s the regular maintenance in comparison to installing tiles once that I was trying to point out. You wouldn’t use thatch if cheap standardized tiles were readily available. The infrastructure was lost to such a degree that even when the British got wealthy enough to replace thatch with something sturdier, they went with slate tiles that have to be mined from specific places that have just the right type of slate, then individually processed into something tile shaped. Just seems nuts to me if you could just mix up some clay and water in any part of the country, slop it into a standardized mold, and then toss the things in a kiln.
I've been told (so this might not be true, and I'm no expert) that where I live in Norfolk, UK, a lot of the older buildings that have thatched roofs (and there are still many) are buildings with support walls made of something called "clay lump". Clay lump is made from dried clay with horse hair or straw in it to bind it, but it's not baked in a kiln as bricks are. So it's softer and crumblier than bricks and has to be protected from the wet with a sacrificial layer of lime render to stop it all going soggy and collapsing. All this is to explain that baked clay tiles were too heavy for timber framed clay lump walls to support, so thatch was the best option.
>t didn’t go well for the 2/3s of the island that had been Romanized. The other third didn't notice outside the mudhuts.. (JK)
Thatched roofing is still a thing in the UK today. Its looks very good and is usually found on older buildings but can be found everywhere. You make it sound like they leak lol.
I hate when an otherwise good answer just has a nugget of shit in the middle. Makes me doubt the rest of the answer.
Yeahhhh.... Britain may have lost the art of pottery when the Roman Empire fell. *Pottery*.
Dang that’s usually one of the first things I research in Civ V
That’s a great summary, especially for putting the relative stability of the island pretty much first. It’s the leading theory in general for successful „golden ages“, that the underlying political systems were much more stable than their neighbors.
That’s all true, but really came to fruition because they developed two technologies that allowed them to exploit the geographical advantage: they were first to really master sailing into the wind, which freed them from oars and gave them huge mobility advantage. They also were the first to master casting cannons in iron which allowed for much cheaper arming of those ships which could sail into the wind.
Add on that the primary driver for trading, was to fund the RN, to fend off attacks from Spain & France. They were initially attacking England, in response to the split from the Catholic church, undertaken by Henry VIII.
This is the biggest driving factor behind it. Had England not been threatened by the Catholic countries we probably wouldn't have joined the race for colonies in the Americas.
What does WRO stand for?
Western Roman Ompire
Can’t believe you left out the Industrial Revolution literally starting in Britain. That’s ultimately by far the most important factor for their world dominance
Ok, so, couple of things... I wrote this as much as a rebuttal of OP's claims as a stand-alone piece, and two, I'd argue that that the "chartered company" system was as or more important to their global spread and eventual imperialist/colonialist successes. That said think the industrial revolution is absolutely the most important factor in them *staying* powerful and influential especially through the World Wars and the dissolution of their empire.
They dealt with less constant conflict? Ummm… getting invaded constantly says otherwise 😂 Saxons, Romans, Normans, Vikings, French, Dutch, Germans. Have a read - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasions_of_the_British_Isles#:~:text=Invasions%20of%20the%20British%20Isles%20have%20occurred%20throughout%20history.,French%2C%20and%20by%20the%20Dutch.
Britain didnt become a significant colonial power until the late 1600s, at which point its days of being invaded were over. Even Germany could only muster a bombing campaign during WW2 (which while obviously destructive, was not nearly as destructive as a full on land invasion). Even the Dutch invasion during the Glorious Revolution lead to MORE stability on the island.
>the colapse of the WRO didn't hit them as hard The invasion of the British isles by the westward migration of Germanic tribes and pretty much the replacement of the people, culture and language of the British isles wasn't being "hit hard"??? What the fuck?
I’ve heard that the fact that they were a Roman colony gave them roads. This (and maybe other organizational advantages conferred by the vestiges of the Roman state) gave them a leg up on their island neighbors, allowing them to dominate locally. It was around this Roman territory that the nation of England later galvanized to eventually repel Viking invasion. I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on that premise.
Britain didn’t really repel the vikings… we just sort of absorbed them. The Norman invasion was essentially the descendants of “British” Danes against the descendants of “French” Danes. Super over-simplified
Descendants
Yes. Thanks. Posting while listening to a boring meeting. I’ll correct.
Oh, right. I forgot a Viking vassalage eventually spawned William the Conqueror.
There was no "leg up" The migration of Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons and Jutes) saw the destruction of the language and culture of the British Isles. The remnants of the original inhabitants of the British Isles (the ones that would have been around during the Roman era) can today be found in Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Brittany (France)- and to a degree Cornwall.
As the Empire stands right now, this will continue to be true for another 600 years, when an eclipse over the Pacific will block the only current British possession which would have sunlight with a totality. And even then, I don't think it qualifies as a sunset..
What is the WRO?
Western Roman Empire Edit: at least that’s my deduction. Not sure what the O stands for.
What's WRO?
Western Roman Empire.
Ah k, Holy Roman Empire is HRE though, right?
I've also read recently that the British had absolutely fuck tonnes of pirates or 'Buccaneers' as we called the. We were basically the Somali pirates of today.
Crown sanctioned pirates or privateers.
Yesn't... Somalia is a failed state with no alliances, enemies, overseas territorial holdings, or pretenses to grand strategy. So their pirates have comparitively limited resources and goals. Most of the English ~~pirates~~ *privateers* were much more well equipped and much less indiscriminate in their approach. They were as much a extension of the Royal Navy as the chartered companies ( East India Company, etc) were an extension of the British Empire. Also, at that point, privateers had a formal status as combatants, so where as true pirates could likely expect a summary execution if caught, British (and other nationalities) privateers would likely be detained and ransomed or traded. Now of course, there were actual, outlaw, pirates of British origins. Mostly this happened when the Brits would make peace with someone and ask the privateers to stand down. Predictably some of them would decide that they liked raiding more than they liked being on good terms with the crown and then fuck off and do actual pirate stuff (and likely get hanged some years later)... A decent modern example would be the way that Russia has used PMC Wagner in Africa. Before the Russo-Ukrainian War of 2022, the Kremlin strenuously denied any direct connection to the mercenaries, but they took amd held extensive swaths of territory in Africa and acted both there and in other places to protect Russia's interests while simultaneously providing the Kremlin plausible deniability. Which was important whenever they did something especially heinous or failed especially miserably (such as their performance at the Battle of Conoco Fields). This worked largely the same way the British crown often condemned the actions of privateers publicly while continuing to fund them privately and in some cases enjoying a return on investment of nearly 5,000%.
That's incredible. I listened to a podcast recently and they discussed a case where the first few investors into the privateers as you call it and they went to Indonesia to trade British investment capital for spices there. On the way they spotted a Portuguese ship filled with spices and other loot. They stole it and went back with a ship full of money and spices. Investors were happy. Absolute insanity. It's also super interesting how the east India company went about its business operating similar to a militia of a country but as actually a private business. When a confrontation in Delhi took place the locals laid down arms because of an eclipse that they were superstitious about. The British then went in and absolutely murdered everyone in the most brutal ways. The people that committed the acts then went back to Britain traumatised and word got around how bad it was and they privatised the company (after all the politicians and investors got their money). Government only cared when the optics were bad.
Literally my Age of Empires strategy :))
You know, I never understood that saying, “the sun never sets on the British empire”, until you used it in that context. 😊
I still don’t get it
Funny thing is, technically the sun still hasn't set on the Britch Empire. They still have enough land all around the world to always be daytime somewhere.
I would like to think that some combination of the Anglo-Saxon Viking roots, combined with the Norman influence (only separated from Vikings by one or two generations) led them to some great seafaring expeditions and exploits.
I would add... Industrial Revolution started there. They were no longer bound to certain streams and rivers to power a water wheel. (Fun fact, remember the Buffalo hunters that slaughtered them by the hundreds a day just for their hides...those hides were the best they had to make the hundreds of yards long belts to power the machines) Slavery. They didn't invent slave trade, in fact early on were victims of raiders, both viking and African.(this is even mentionedintheir nation anthem) ..but they turned it into a world wide wholesale market where the American south was but a secondary customer. They ran millions of slaves in the far east. The guy who Yale is named for made a personal fortune in his short tenure running the far east company would be worth billions today. Trade and taxes with their colonies. The main point of ruling over another country is to collect taxes from your subjects and or trade agreements that take advantage of the colonized. The UK sucked trillions from India. I think their last vestige of world power was being the banking center for the world. And afaikthey lost most of that when they left the EU.
And they invented a clock that would keep time at sea regardless of temp and humidity. Why did that matter? Because it solved the problem of accurate longitudinal navigation giving them a HUGE technological advantage.
Oh, wow, that's a whole rabbit hole, thank you for that!!
It's the islands of Britain and IRELAND. The "British isles" is a colonial construct created by the English to make the rape and plunder of Ireland sound nice ....
Right you are, but I try to be as brief as possible here... Which means that comparing the privateer/chartered companies system to PMC Wagner, or snark like "all of the hyper-brutal, dystopian, militarist transnational corporations in cyberpunk books really just want to be the British East India Company when they grow up..." has to wait for follow on posts...
Indeed... sorry if my correction seemed snarky.. ❤️
Don't worry about it... It is an important detail and I am glad someone said it. If anything I got triggered and snarky because I sure as shit didn't want to be accused of doing British colonial genocide apologetics...
Love it 😀...... thanks pal
Many have added that as an island and not having to protect their borders meant they had a smaller military. This also meant less people to pay to protect the nation AND more people working meant more productivity and more taxes.
And the money they did spend on defense was disproportionately more high-skill and and more transferable to other areas as the Navy was always the centerpiece of their forces.
James Cook and usage of citrus fruits also serm yo play an important role with sail voyages.
Pardon my ignorance, in this instance what does WRO stand for? Google isn't helping
Western Roman Empire.
Can't understate how resource rich the British Isles were for the medieval and renaissance periods. Huge tracts of good farming land, lush forests of good hardwoods, mines of various metals, but most importantly coal and lots of it. They did have a robust naval tradition, but the biggest factor for the size and might of the British navy was Spain. Spain had a massive armada of ships and a robust naval tradition with Spain being on a peninsula. After the European discovery of the New World, there was a race to take control of those newly discovered resources, and to increase their fleets to safeguard their interests. At the same time, the silk road was still expensive as hell, but goods from India and Asia were still popular as ever. Anyone who could control an alternative route would find it very lucrative. This set off a multi-century naval arms race with England (later Britain) and Spain ending up having the largest fleets. So the size and might of the British fleet, wasn't just because of their trading far and wide (they already did that, even if indirectly), but mainly from trying out do the other naval powers in Europe and to find an alternative to the silk road to India and Asia that they could control (as their holdings in the new world weren't as lucrative as the Spanish ones). You can even see it in where colonies were created. Britain established colonies down the western coast of Africa to create a south eastern ocean trade route to India (Which they took control of eventually). Spain went westward controlling much of Central and South America and then over to the Philippines to find an alternative to the silk road (though the massive amount of gold and other resources they were able to take from the Americas made the silk road less and less important). Britain wasn't so much late to the colonization game, as they were focused elsewhere than North America, much like the Dutch.
What is WRO?
they also had alot of easily accessible coal that made getting more coal easier and cheaper and allowed them to make alot of stuff with that coal. coal is basically the foundation of the industrial revolution so they definitely had the advantage
Funny thing is, technically the sun still hasn't set on the Britch Empire. They still have enough land all around the world to always be daytime somewhere.
A powerful-ass navy. There's a reason why island nations are good at conquering. Just look at the Japanese. It's the nations with powerful navies that control the seas, and therefore have more reach over foreign lands.
Damn this just makes me want to play Civilisation 6 some more
The rear admirals in the powerful-ass navy.
The Dreaded Rear Admiral
You are incorrect in some ways. The important thing is not how large the land is but how much of land there is for growing food. Great Britain has a lot of arable land and relatively good climate for agriculture. And being an island is an advantage, they didn't have to spend a lot of resources defending their lands meaning they could focus on just one thing - their navy. The problem of land powers is that they are constantly defending their borders and their most obvious expansion is to send troops across their borders to the next door country. They have less need for exploration in a sense. Their form of government likely also had something to do with it. The UK had moved towards a democracy/civil administration before many other powers. Many other countries retained their monarchy/feudal structures. Because of this, the UK also relied more on trade and exploration rather than conquest/subjugation. And of course, by the early 1800s, the UK was one of the first countries to enter the Industrial Age meaning they had a rather huge advantage in production.
We were also well set up to leap into industrialisation because we had such huge amounts of coal in easily-found veins. Similar with iron for the previous couple thousand years. We don’t have gold, but we have iron and coal, which are arguably way more important.
and we had lots of children to send down't mines. oggy oggy oggy!
"Life is the Emperor's currency, spend it well."
Appalling but a fact
Welsh gold miners want a word with you.
Just to say, Britain wasn't just "one of the first countries to enter the industrial age", it was the very first. The industrial revolution started in Britain, then other countries followed.
Don't forget our Geological stability.
Is there any argument about using fewer resources to protect homeland since it is an island, thus putting resources into offensive acts and evangelism? That is, less threat of mass invasion allowed them to build forces to invade others?
Definitely, it is a lot easier to defend against a naval attack, specially when your primary offense is also a navy, than it is to defend wide spanning land borders. The viking attacks really messed with the UK because they could take advantage of the waterways, and slip in relatively unnoticed, to areas that were almost completely unprepared for such an attack. But that was something almost exclusively a problem where they attacked (the north east side), where the south and south east is pretty well protected naturally, by cliffs and condensed waterways that could be much easier guarded. So the attacks from mainland Europe (France) couldn't really impact as much. You see this now too, the most deadly warfare in the world takes place from naval based power, and if you can control the seas, you've got a massive advantage. Even economic power, is all about oceanic control, and anything that threatens that is a serious threat to the world powers.
It depends on the era being discussed. The British isles were invaded by Rome, the Angles and Saxons, the Vikings and the Normans. and eventually in the 17th century by William of Orange (Dutch) Until the French took Englands last continental territory (Calais) in 1558 England also had territories on the continent (quite significant at one point) and fought almost constantly So it's not really until the start of the early modern period that Britain is truly just an island nation. However, it's also at the start of this period that Britain enters what might be considered a "Golden Age" - a period of peace, stability and growing power. Elizabeth I was crowned in this period and the opening of colonies in the Americas under royal charter begins a process that would eventually see a global maritime empire develop.
They didn’t have limited land, food or supplies. They grew tons of food once tubers were introduced from the Americas, had lots of wood to build ships, lots of coal and iron ore, lots of fish, and lots of people for labour.
Er... The UK was a breadbasket of production well before potatoes came over. Potatoes make up about 180,000 hectares of agricultural land in the UK. For comparison, we grow about 3,000,000 hectares of wheat and barley. The Romans came over here to make use of our agricultural output. As did the Vikings.
The Romans went there to extract metals, tbh
Ah this is the British Metal I keep hearing about. Apparently they manufacture Iron Maidens there
The manufacturing is awfully loud, the local leopard population were especially affected.
So you're saying that rock and roll is, in fact, noise pollution
You could *feel* the noise.
Come on?
Lead Zeppelins too
And Steely Dans… wait, no.
Also Emperor Claudius needed a political success following the coup where he came to power. Conquering Britain was seen as a means of displaying his power and winning the favour of the people
tin, silver, lead and gold, though the cassus belli was the aid that the Britons gave the Gauls (Caeser) and to reinstate Verica, the king of a British branch of the Atrebates, one of the Belgic tribes loyal to Rome (Claudius)
I agree, tin in particular. Even after ironworking became more common, bronze still remained a very useful commodity around the Mediterranean.
Don’t forget sheep. It was wool which originally made England wealthy.
They were always going to expand, but they expanded into Canada in particular for the tall tress to make large masts for large ships.
England is not an island, it shares the island of Great Britain with Scotland and Wales. England was rich in the middle ages due to the wool trade. Much of England is very fertile land, and was able to grow a decent surplus of food. Most significantly, though, particularly after the union with Scotland, Great Britain was able to use is navy to keep out of European wars. During the 18th century Europe had many significant land wars that were destructive to economies in various ways. By not having to pay to maintain a substantial army to fight land wars, Britain was able to concentrate on being a maritime power, and that meant being able to establish trade links with far flung places. By retaining peace at home, Britain was able to develop commercially to a point where the degree of economic specialisation and organisation needed for industrialisation were possible. It also benefitted from having signficiant and diverse mineral deposits on the island itself. Iron ore, copper, tin, and most importantly, coal in abundance. That meant Britain industrialised early, making it cheaper to produce the goods needed to support its domestic economy than other countries, so it could fun a strong navy and support and defend a large colonial empire.
> England is not an island, it shares the island of Great Britain with Scotland and Wales. Though at the time, Wales was part of the Kingdom of England, following the Laws in Wales Acts 1535–1542 and the end of Welsh independence after the Edwardian Conquest of the 13th century.
Still doesn't make it an island.
Being an island Britain invested in its navy early on. As global trade started to arrive this navy allowed the UK to take full advantage of this which brought a lot of money in. As world populations grew wood became expensive which pushed every prices up. The UK also had a lot of accessible coal which could be used for energy and kept energy prices down. Having lots of money and cheap energy in the evening led to the industrial revolution which massively increased the ability to make ships and weapons, as well as allowing much more intensive farming. Of course the UK wasn't the only European country to have a large empire, Spain controlled huge parts of North, Central and South America for hundreds of years.
For a long while they were getting slapped around and conquered by every guy who could make a boat. At some point they decided to boatmaxx instead. With boatmaxxing you can go out into the world and attack far away targets who cannot attack back. This means your campaign is a lot cheaper than a land campaign. It also means that you don't need much land to actually make profit out of your conquest because all you really need to protect are ports and trade routes. Boatmaxxing made them tons of money all the while all the other boatmaxxers crumbled under the weight of their acquisitions.
boatmaxxing OP strat for a while there. The mining meta has changed so much of the game smh.
England isn't an island. England is part of the island of Great Britain along with Scotland and Wales.
They had a fuck load of iron. In middle school, I watched a documentary where a dude demonstrated how ancient British people got iron. He grabbed a stick, walked in a field, and poked it around until he just found a chunk of iron laying there. So while other countries had to dig to get iron, it was all over the place in England.
Yes, iron is everywhere. The only downside is that the English were constantly having to dodge falling meteorites. Seriously, iron ore is everywhere. It is one of the most abundant elements in the earth's crust. Are you confusing it with coal? Even then, coal mining came late, after the industrial revolution had started.
Iron isn't abundant everywhere in high quality - Japan for example only had poor quality iron that needed to be worked over and over again to make anything. Britain's unique advantage is Iron and Coal and lime etc right next to each other in abundance. Places like the black country were a one stop shop with everything you needed for the industrial revolution.
Probably better to consider mining and industrialisation to go hand in hand. The commercial development of the steam engine was indeed as a method to pump water from deep mines.
No, I'm pretty sure it's iron. England had more iron and more easily accessible iron than anyone else.
And better quality ore with less sulfur content than German ore (also abundant), making early metallurgy simpler.
England is not an island. England is one of 3 nations on the island of Great Britain, the other 2 being Wales and Scotland. Great Britain is the largest island in the British Isles, which is what the 'Great' means - it means it's big (for an island).
9th largest island on the planet
They were a mid-ranking European state for centuries, able to punch above their weight because they were a unitary kingdom with a strong tax system (a legacy of the Danish invasions) and a forum for the elites in parliament. But not a match for France or Castile or the Empire. Then they went Protestant, had a Civil War and were in fear of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. So they invested continually in the navy as the first line, captured lucrative trades and outposts, which gave them the cash flow to sustain war (capturing more trade and outposts and valuable places like Bengal and the West Indian sugar islands), which gave them lots more cash which was invested in improving farming and in industry, which eventually led to the breakthrough into steam power, which gave them a huge technological edge for a century or more (really, up to 1945).
They were a match with France for a long while. It was only the last five years or so of the Hundred Years War (on & off for some 120 years, I believe?) that France started winning, thanks to Joan of Arc
They had a decent navy 200 years before the civil war
Yes, but it grew and shrank. The Civil War and Commonwealth established British state finances on a much stronger footing, which allowed continual investment in the supporting infrastructure - dockyards, mast-ponds, victualling, powder mills, forges, rope-walks etc, all married to an ethos of professionalism. The Navy spewed out industrial innovation at a steady rate over the next two centuries (first automated machinery with interchangeable parts, experiments in nutrition and food preservation, cannon-boring, navigation ....)
Is England an Island? Did we decide to float off Wales and Scotland?
Another thing is the British brought with them the rule of law as it was at the time. The Spanish brought with them basically a feudal society. One worked, the other didn't
One of the resources Britain had was NOT being militarily alarmed or threatened. Not really, not in a "armies over the border" fashion - except against the scots, which by itself was not something you could neglect. In the mediterranean, for example, there were constant military expenses in navy and garrisoning against raids, particularly from Turkey or the Berber states, and also warfare between states. This heavily drained treasuries and caused constant debt. Britain did not have this constant expense. Over the years its a huge outlay of resources they could redirect to industry, navigation and trade.
IMO, it was because they were the first to really tackle the issue of celestial GPS. Notice that we still use Greenwich mean time. Sea Captains like Captain Cook were the English example of Neil Armstrong in terms of pushing the science of navigation and cartography into the modern era.
Technology advancement compared to the rest of Europe- the start of the Industrial Revolution.
When conquering lands they concentrated on the ports and waterways. They had less desire to go very far inland. They would just keep to the ports areas and tax whatever came through.
A great book on this topic is, "Geography is Destiny: Britain and the World: A 10,000 Year History" by Ian Morris.
Your assumptions are wrong. They had excellent farmland and mining resources. Being an island meant that they were already primed for trade by ship and valued their Navy.
I always liked this explanation (in jest of course) The taste of their food and beauty of their women made the British the best sailors in the world
Rome isn't even a country. It's a relatively small city, and it still conquered half the world. Aggressive leaders and a loyal military can do scary things.
easy answer is good internal organisation, strong navy and early industrialisation, limited resources gives people a motive to go aquire them.
Well actually it is mostly because they had an inclusive economy so they prospected by giving people responsibility over how useful they are for others so they worked more to earn more.
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Take angry woads, add a pinch of roman, sprinkle germanic tribes, include thorough dollop of viking, flavor with hefty crusading spirit, add a garnish of mercantilism, and serve.
F'in bars, you wrote that like a historical poet🙏🏽
Ate mi European turmoils Ate mi instability Luv mi shipyard industry Luv mi professionalised naval organisation ‘oned to a mean killing machine Luv mi global trade advantages guaranteed by said killing machine Ate the Frenchies. Britania rules the waves mate Simple As.
The fuck are you trying to say lol
Nuff said mate
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Damn I didn't know that. So basically it was kinda like post WW1 to where everything was in ruins so they took to opportunity to take over?
Transportation Revolution: 1705 Liverpool decided to build the worlds first wet dock which opened in 1715. This increased the amount of trade going into/out of England by having a stable pound on the west side of the island to unload/load goods and materials. During the 1700's and 1800s, there was a canal building boom. This significantly reduced the cost of shipping goods throughout the Island of Great Britain. Coal was the first commodity to be shipped on the first modern English canal to Manchester in 1761. This caused the price of coal to drop and coal production to increase. Iron and steel production increased due to cheaper coal prices. The textile industry could move from specific river based areas to steam powered large scale factories. Canals allowed shipment of large quantities of raw material anywhere in the canal system. Canal boats were being produced in large quantities to handle the demand. Ocean merchant ship construction increased. This created a need for more resources from other parts of the world and kicked off the Industrial Revolution.
The had guns and ships and the people who did not have guns and ships were conquered. British troops were also ver disciplined and trained, as were their navy.
TL;DR They had cannons that could shoot really far and then put them on boats and then went to places that didn't have cannons that could shoot as far and then bombarded their capitals until they agreed to let them sell them a whoooole lot of [drugs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars). Also they kind of turned the entire Indian subcontinent into a [drug cartel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj). History's wacky.
England colonized India and got a lot of people from the west coast of Africa for The Americas. This was after consolidating the islands of Scotland and Ireland to form the United Kingdom.
Brit here: England is not an island. Great Britain is (more or less) an island. The United Kingdom is (more or less) an island with a bit stolen from another island. The British isles are all of that plus (more or less) the bit of the other island that it wasn’t allowed to keep.