Did America Bring Down the British Empire?
On Christmas Day I spent lunch and tea listening to a long discourse about the demise of the British Empire.
This discussion did not derive of my own choosing; I had been invited to a neighbor’s flat for a festive meal and had hoped politics and history would not creep into the proceedings. Sadly my hopes were dashed when the hostess decided to launch into a lecture about the origins of the end of empire. She posited that the United States had been the driving force behind the collapse of British imperial ambitions.
This dear lady is a cultured and well-read individual and can be a formidable debater. I kept quiet as she explained that a succession of American administrations had set out to dismantle British hegemony in the world. Be it India, Africa, Palestine, Suez, Northern Ireland, or lands further afield, she said the Americans had been hell-bent on making sure the centuries-old colonial structure was undermined and then brought to an end wherever it may lurk.
What I found so implausible about this assertion is the notion that American presidents, lawmakers, and ordinary citizens were sitting in their respective homes deliberating on the obliteration of an ally’s interests around the globe. What was America’s biggest obsession in the 1920s? My contention is that the Bolshevik revolution and rise of the Soviet Union was at the top of any leader’s list as that decade unfolded. From Woodrow Wilson onward, the emphasis was on developing America’s industrial heartland and keeping Wall Street booming. Likewise the reactionary and isolationist lawmakers and presidents elected in the 1920s were not, I hasten to stress, hell-bent on bringing down the British Empire. The suffering of the corn and farm belts during the Great Depression of the 1930s was immense and the project on which Franklin Roosevelt had embarked to save his country from utter desolation was manifold. At the same time, the threat of Stalin’s Soviet Union and of internal communist infiltration was uppermost in the thoughts of lawmakers, intelligence officers, and leaders. The German American Bund and rising anti-Semitism, due to the suspicion that many Jewish-American immigrants were fifth-columnists wedded to communism, was a significant element in the public discourse of the 1930s. After the war there was a wave of trials, the Nixon-Alger Hiss hearings, and the Jerry Voorhis-Helen Gahagan Douglas cases culminating in the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg as atomic spies. The communist threat had become an American fixation, not the threat of Britain. It could be mooted that the rise of socialism and of the welfare state under Clement Attlee after the war raised American hackles, but I do not see how this could be interpreted as an effort to disable British power.
Before sitting down to write this article I decided to research my hosts’ contention that America set out to dismantle the empire nearly one hundred years ago. I searched for core material and could not find much academic work that could back up this theory, although it is accepted that President Eisenhower hung Britain out to dry during the Suez crisis of 1956. France, Israel, and Britain took on the Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser when he nationalized the Suez Canal; the three nations were abandoned at the crucial hour by the United States. It is said Americans could not buy a drink in British pubs and were refused service in other establishments.
Does this constitute “bringing down the empire?” I think not.
Did America bring down the British Empire? No.
However there was some American skulduggery involved in wresting control of the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) away from the Brits; the sneaky border switch in the Alaska panhandle and creating the oddity that is Point Roberts in Washington State.
But bring down the British Empire? No. The Brits gave back or walked away from much of it.
It can be argued that the Empire did not survive the end of the Age of Sail, and the rise of other powerful iron boat navies, such as Germany, Japan, and the United States.
Also, there is the idea that the British people’s enthusiasm for maintaining and defending a far-flung empire inevitably began to wane after WWI. Successive Parliaments instituted a series of budget cuts, and the Ministry Of Defence was hit hard. Between WWI and WWII, the US became the most powerful blue water navy in the world, and this effectively put an end to any one nation’s desire to have or maintain an empire.
You went through all that hoops. First place to have looked was Woodrow Wilson. He pressed for democracy and for self determination of a peoples around the world. This was 1917 or 18. So your friend is pretty much right. We did everything in our power to undermine the British Empire. They practiced mercantilism. We wanted an international and liberal trading order. America 1, British Empire 0
Tell your friend: so what? They were a lousy empire to begin with. The Roman Empire had some emperors who were not from Rome or the Italian peninsula for that matter. But the rulers of the British Empire were from a royal line limited to that Isle. (funny that the Hanover line came from Germany but Germany wasn’t part of the empire)
FDR wanted to dismantle the empire after WWII and saw to it as the price for saving England and Europe.
I am a little amazaed that Margaret Thatcher would want Luger Pistols for British Forces in Ireland, a 70yr old design that had been surpassed as a service weapon decades earlier.
The Empire broke apart mainly because Britain could no longer afford it, maintaining a colonial army is expensive and the liberation movements of the era were pressing on all fronts. Britain had the choice of empire or the dole and chose the dole.
First, on Suez, one needs to recall that at precisely the same time there was another little contretemps going in in Central Europe – the Hungarian Revolution. Eisenhower and Dulles were worried that the Soviets might decide to go farther than the Austrian border in putting an end to the revolt, and that having the British and French fighting in Suez meant that their troops wouldn’t be available in Europe, if needed.
In 1946, because of WWII, Britain was, essentially, bankrupt. The Labor government decided that it could not afford to maintain the British military at WWII levels. Gandhi, Jinnah, and others basically convinced Labor that continuing to try to keep India from independence wasn’t worth the effort. The U.S. was far too involved in rebuilding Europe, initiating the Marshall Plan, and facing off against the Soviets to both much with British colonies. Oh, and the French and Dutch were having their problems, too.
The map accompanying the article implies that Canada and Australia [members of the British Commonwealth] were still “colonies” in 1945. Canada achieved independence in 1867 [Newfoundland joined Canada in 1949] and Australia gained independence in 1901.
Accusing us of destroying their Empire may well be a preemptive strike. The UK does not want to discuss responsibility for their crimes, for the messed-up state of the modern world.
Until recently, the United States was a White Anglo-Saxon country. To President Roosevelt, Jews and Catholics were aliens in Protestant America. So it’s unlikely a WASP nation would want to sink their WASP homeland.
But the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants DID royally screw the entire world. You name the continent, Africa, India, North America, Australia, wherever the WASP Empire went, trouble followed. War, murder, theft, slavery, racism, the Empire left a legacy that brings misery even today. (Insert “Life of Brian” joke here)
If that were my peoples’ legacy, I would run from it, too. So, state-supported media in the UK turns their attention to modern issues involving the United States, the Catholics and the Jews. The BBC pretends to be Progressive, while ignoring the irreparable structural damage caused by their ancestors. It’s the only way the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants can sleep.
I’m with you. I cannot think of anything you missed, unless we consider the 1776 Colonial Rebellion as an event that made later rebellions and anti-colonial struggles possible. But few would argue that anti-colonialism, per se, was the motivating factor in the revolution.
Nice article but a little after the fact, don’t you think? Once again, why do you live there?
This article is pretty much correct on all counts except the part about Lady Thatcher and Jimmy Carter.
First of all, the weapons being requested to arm the police in Northern Ireland were not “Luger pistols”. They were Ruger police revolvers in .38 Special and/or .357 Magnum, which were standard police sidearms in the U.S. at the time. I was involved in the profession at that time and was privileged to work briefly with Commissioner Colin Greenwood of the London Metropolitan Police, who had been in charge of the project that determined that a double-action revolver was a more reasonable sidearm for “Firearms Trained” police officers in not only Northern Ireland, but the UK generally, than the FN (High Power) 9mm automatic pistol used by their armed forces. (At the time, of course, the modern type of double-action high-capacity automatic pistols most common in police use today didn’t yet exist.)
Secondly, the major reason Carter turned Lady Thatcher down (to the point of issuing an order prohibiting not just Ruger, but any American arms maker, supplying weapons to the police in Northern Ireland, under threat of losing government contracts here in the U.S.) was not principally worries about the “Irish vote”. The major reason was to avoid angering Senator Ted Kennedy, who while he did not openly support NORAID, definitely sympathized with it, largely due to his perception that the IRA was mostly socialist in philosophy. (I often suspected he was confusing the Provos with the Irish National Liberation Army, on that count.) Considering that Ted was one of the leaders of the “Revolution Lobby” in the Democratic Congressional delegation at the time, this probably isn’t surprising.
Carter needed Kennedy’s support for most of his plans. He wasn’t about to do anything to get on Kennedy’s bad side.
clear ether
eon
I would say it was 90% British incompetency, 9% Soviet Union’s action and 1% America’s action.
British incompetency like sending to the Fareast 4 oooooooooooold battlecruisers who were no match for any Japanese capital ship and who anyway were easily sunk by Japanese bombers. Incompeteny like needing over four years to issue a tank with a half decent gun, like having biplane torpedo bombers and useless Skuas as fighters on their few and small carriers, incomptency like what led to being beaten by Rommel and a few armored cars in 1941 and surrendering to Japanese force one third their own in Malaysia and Singapore. And the result of this incomtency is that they lost the respect and admiration of the colonized people. By the beginning of the century millions in their colonies (and not merley in the white ones like Australia or New Zealand) wanted to be more British-like, by 1944 they despised the Britsih and wanted to get rid of them.
But it is safer for British elites to blame the Amercabns so the commoners don’t question their fitness to rule.
These British (and European) scumbags still can not comprehend that the time when someone will toil for their well-being, regardless of how smart and educated they appears, is long gone.
Current attempt to import toiling serfs inside of the Europe also backfired.
One should provide real globally competitive services or goods to have nice living.
It was interesting to have read in a recent bio of FDR and Winston Churchill that FDR always took Stalin’s point of view over Churchhill’s. It also pointed out that FDR’s wife Eleonor associated with world socialists who despised the British Empire and its colonial system and wanted it destroyed. There is evidence that American socialists who were always present in American administrations took the view that it would be a good thing for the British Empire to be replaced by the UN. I think that your British friends had a good point.
Atlantic charter? Nothing on the Atlantic Charter?
The English Empire had to go. The US did very little to sustain it and hindered it as much as possible. The only help we gave the English Empire was to help prevent it from being replaced by a German, Russian or Japanese Empire. The English Empire was replaced by the American Century and we worked hard to make that happen.
God bless the English, I don’t think they would take the Empire back if you tried to give it to them. You can’t say that about the Russians.
Wiki: Prior to World War I, the United Kingdom had one of the world’s strongest economies, holding 40% of the world’s overseas investments. However, by the end of the war the country owed £850 million, mostly to the United States, with interest costing the country some 40% of all government spending.
More from Wiki: One of the results of the USA sending troops to Europe in the Second World War that the U.S. dollar replaced the pound as the international unit of currency. This transferred huge financial power to the USA and ensured it supplanted Britain as the world’s great financial power for at least the next 60 years.
It was Christmas, 1998, and I was visiting the elder of my two sisters, and her husband who had a PhD in Psychology. History came up, and I noted the similarities between the US Bill of Rights and the English Bill of Rights. George asked, how come the British didn’t apply them to the colonies. My answer, in a gawd awful English Accent, “The colonies were meant to serve Mother England, forever”.
Now, we are the stage where the US is losing its grip on the leadership position of the Anglo-sphere (thanks to the dithering of then Prime Minister Anthony Eden in the Suez Crisis, Great Britain lost the leading position). So, a new leader can take the lead: Great Britain, in concert with the other successful Commonwealth countries, such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and India, to have a common currency, a common foreign policy, and
a common defense policy. But without taking on the hubris that the EU has taken on.
For it helps to see where one goes, when the past is taken into consideration.
As an American, the whole concept of empire is revolting. Yet I think a lot of us have a sentimental streak when it comes to Britain. “Rule Britannia” is such a stirring old song when not applied to their ambitions for the young USA. But since we have long been the biggest dog on the block, it only natural that Brits would blame us for their decline. Biggest bandwagon in the world.
Joshua Muravchik in “Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism” states the following:
Drained by war, England no longer had the wealth or forces to hold its great empire, nor the political strength to resist American support for the cause of independence. In any event, Labour rejected colonialism in principle. On the issue of empire, Attlee exhibited none of the monarchist traditionalism that he displayed on other questions. His goal for the colonies consisted of two points, he said: independence and socialism.(Muravchik 2002, 195)
I’m sure blaming the United States for the decline of the British Empire makes for an easy and currently fashionable explanantion, but causual explanations are almost never that simple. Maybe, just maybe, those colonized peoples did not want to remain under the British yoke. Great Britain was terribly weak following the Second World War, requiring over three billion dollars in Marshall Plan aid in the late 1940s to keep their economy afloat. Did the British really expect the United States to foot the bill for their colonial maintenance too? As Muravchik points out, they were in no position to maintain their vast holdings. And if Muravchik is correct, Labour initated plenty of internal political resistance to maintaining colonial possessions. In the aftermath of war the British public may have been more concerned with rebuilding their own cities and economy and less on maintaining far away colonial structures.
The US and Great Britain were competitors,
not enemies; Winning away market share is
one thing, destroying a trading partner’s
Imperial economy is quite another.
The sunset of the Empire was a result of
the Industrial Revolution, and the Great
War; Colonialism ceased to provide ROI,
and there were no replacement Colonial
rulers. GB deserves praise for winding
down its Empire gracefully, as opposed
to, say, the French, who left, taking
with them everything which was not
nailed down.
Sounds like sour grapes.
The US broke from Europe. They were those countries on the other side of the Atlantic. The US was focused on this hemisphere, the Monroe doctrine and Manifest Destiny being two very telling principles. We wanted Europe *out* of this hemisphere. Likewise the US wasn’t very intersted in overseas involvement. The Spanish/American war was provoked and drug the US unwillingly into empire building. And not long after the US militarily was still woefully unprepared for the two great wars of the last century due to the population’s isolationist tendencies.
Any American aid in dismantling GB’s empire was incidental and isolated to a very few individual efforts at most, definitely never American policy.
The British Empire fell primarily because the British themselves fell. The great wars especially broke them, forcing the US unwillingly onto the world stage.
The USA did not have to put trimming the lion’s tail on its formal agenda but ever since independence and its for then and now very ideological Constitution it has been part of the US attitude and diplomacy of opportunity to make pompous comments about British India, British Palestine and British Ireland as no Communist threats were around to divert the US as in post 1945 Indo China or the pro-Soviet parts of the Arab World – and Pakistan. What must never be forgotten is that in the USA votes count and large packets of hyphenated Americans vote on their private causes. In this standard US electioneering the Palestine Mandate and Ireland counted “disproportionately” – as is the favoured fashionable adjective.
However the Washington Naval Treaty Feb 1922 was deliberate US [security] policy and the US contribution to the political vacumns that allowed WW II to come about. The US had relied on the British RN to keep off other navies but after 1919 with the RN as the only big navy around and no competition to divert it, the US insisted on parity or a naval race but afterr WW I the UK was exhausted: ie the USA was stretching its international muscle as anybody who can does. The result of this SALT Treaty of the that era and technology was to freeze not only the RN but British will to do anything about strategic political “tar-babies”unless the US also joined in – whence appeasement and Munich. This new caution included not renewing the British-Japanese naval alliance of 1902 so as not to offend the USwhich both froze out the Japanese in high dudgeon and explains why they refused diplomatic approaches to refrain from China, Korea and other adventures. They knew the British RN was stretched (courtesy of the US) and that the US was in cocky “damn the world” isolation.
Or a more obvious point…if the US is to blame for the fall of the British empire then who is to blame for Spain, Portugal, France, Germany and Italy’s empires falling? Also the US? Or perhaps other factors in the 20th century were far more influential (wars in europe anyone?)
I remember reading that FDR was suspicious of Churchill’s manipulation of the US war effort in support of empire. I suppose Amity Schlaes would know about that.
Rather than the wholehearted goal of the destruction of the British Empire I would say that American foreign policy has been, up until now, designed to expand free markets. If that was at the expense of the British Empire well, so be it. To Americans the Empire and colonialism was the extension of English aristocracy for which Americans had and still have no use. (note the fuss over Obama bowing to foreign potentates.)
It is more accurate to suggest that America simply ignored the Empire and encouraged free trade. Britain could not compete in a free market. Once America became an economic powerhouse after the civil war, there was nothing that Britain could do to compete with the free market. Empire had no use.
Dig deeper. FDR was opposed to British colonialism and forced Churchill to agree to a statement in favor of self-rule during one of their secret WWII meetings. When the British cabinet was informed of this, the consequences to the empire were clearly understood and efforts made to walk back. This tension was the 800 pound gorilla in the room of every high level meeting the two had. Until the rise of the Third Reich, Churchill, like the other members of the ruling class in his c ountry, saw America as its chief rival in the world. The U.S. was aware of this animosity had prepared war plans in case they sparked hostilities with Britain.
Former colony USA *is* the British Empire; the British handed the reins over when it (the US) grew up. Except for playing cricket and putting the Queen on US money, the US is the extension of British ambition and know-how. In today’s world English is the lingua franca of business and success just as it was a century ago (and moreso now.)
In nature the parent’s genes live on in giving birth and the offspring carries on (and in our case cares for the parent.) This isn’t so different.
Not only has the sun not set on the Empire, it isn’t likely to, either.
” He pressed for democracy and for self determination of a peoples around the world. This was 1917 or 18.”
Categorically untrue. Wilson pushed for the self-determination of *European* peoples, mostly in the old Austro-Hungarian territories. The results of this doctrine were seen in Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, not overseas. Not one of the European colonies was ever considered for independence – they were just shuffled from the Central Powers to the Allies, as with the Middle East (formerly Turkish) and East Africa (formerly German).
It was this racialist hypocrisy, as he saw it, that turned Versailles attendee Ho Chi Minh from liberalism to Communism.
———————
“But the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants DID royally screw the entire world. You name the continent, Africa, India, North America, Australia, wherever the WASP Empire went, trouble followed. War, murder, theft, slavery, racism, the Empire left a legacy that brings misery even today. (Insert “Life of Brian” joke here)”
What absolute rot- which, sadly, is the standard diet fed to schoolchildren today. There’s not a place in the world that the British didn’t leave in better shape than they found it. Blaming Third World poverty on the West, as if somehow it didn’t exist there before the White Man brought it, is the Great White Guilt Myth. Racism? Slavery? Really? I assure you, Africa had a thriving intra- and inter-continental slave trade for centuries before the first Portuguese sea-captain sloshed ashore on the Gold Coast.
This article is backwards; British Bankers enslaved America.
Britain pulled back from physically maintaining presence in its colonies, to having the colonies use Britain as its banking center. In the USA this was formally sealed in 1913, by use of the Federal Reserve. The Bank of england and the square mile that make up the city of London Corporation ( not to be confused with the city of London), control the currencies of the world. They also set the price of Gold Bullion. They also control many world trades.
why waste money with armies and law and order ….British bankers are the worlds Banker, mortgage holder and landlord.
Ms Gould:
Check George Friedman’s book “The Nex 100 Years” for additional possible clues about America’s alleged efforts to bring down the empire. The author’s explanation of the Lend Lease act and America’s effort to dominate the North Atlantic sea lanes may shed some light.
Luger pistols? Really?
Interesting stuff here, but I am distracted from the discussion by my current studies in which, Burgoyne is headed down Lake Champlain in July of 1777 and Forts Ticonderoga and Independence are about to be abandoned by our motley crew, even after they had put in tousands of man-hours fortifying and refortifying both places. That was one key high moment in the Brits’ early empire, a tiny bit like Lee making it within sight of Harrisburg, just before coming back SOUTH to lose at Gettysburg. But within a couple months, a hundred miles or so to the south, Burgoyne had to SURRENDER himself and his large army at Saratoga, and after that…the deluge.
“However the Washington Naval Treaty Feb 1922 was deliberate US [security] policy and the US contribution to the political vacumns that allowed WW II to come about….the US insisted on parity or a naval race but afterr WW I the UK was exhausted: ie the USA was stretching its international muscle as anybody who can does.”
You have the facts on their head. It was the British who pushed for the Treaty, because they were well aware that without a limitation treaty their exhausted economy couldn’t possibly keep up with the USA: in fact we had already embarked on the construction the six Lexington-class battlecruisers and the six South Dakota-class battleships. The treaty forced us to cancel and scrap them all (save the two carrier conversions), together with the fourth Colorado-class BB; the Brits only gave up projected paper designs and obsolescent pre-war ships, and were permitted to build two new battleships (the Nelsons).
Both the US and the UK were united in one purpose, in which they were successful: restricting Japan, whom both had justified fears concerning, to capital-ship tonnage considerably less than either Atlantic power.
Where does England hooking up with the European Union fit into this hypothesis? If England *wanted* to be an Imperial Power, wouldn’t they have told the Brussels bureaucrats to take a hike, rather than ceding any remaining power the English might have to the Germans and the French? Personally, I would rather be an American poodle (see Puerto Rico and Canada) than a Yurp whipping boy.
Here goes Ms Gould again on her self imposed mission to create discord!
My foreign policy for my country would be simple.
1. Never go to war to rescue the French. (WW1 & WW2)
2. Never join American wars. (Afghanistan, Iraq etc)
3. Never ask for American help – we can’t afford it.
Remove American military, security & intelligence apparatus from the UK.
Live & Kisses
Michael in England
Required reading to understand what happened to the British Empire is “Lords of Finance – The Bankers Who Broke the World” by Liaquat Ahamed. The British Empire crumbled as a result of (1) debts incurred in WWI; (2) America’s refusal to compromise the debts; (3) Norman Montagu’s (British central banker)suicidal crusade to return Britain to the GOLD STANDARD, destroying its role as world financial leader; (4) heavily pushed and prodded to do so by the Americans who understood that they would rule the world of finance under the Gold Standard because America had accumulated all of the gold.
After reading the book, I think you will agree that the British Empire crumbled largely as a result of bad monetary policy, with a strong push by America, as its creditor, that insisted on a return to the Gold Standard.
Interestingly, America later, also tried to destroy itself in pursuit of the Gold Standard. Two great empires were brought to their knees before leaders finally gave up their practically theological fascination with gold.
America and the world’s obsession in the 1920′s was Britain’s war debts to America; France’s war debts to Britain; and France’s attempts to carve flesh in the form of war reparations from Germany. Otherwise, Americans were particularly isolationist during that time.
michael in Merry Olde:
“1. Never go to war to rescue the French. (WW1 & WW2)
2. Never join American wars. (Afghanistan, Iraq etc)
3. Never ask for American help – we can’t afford it.”
You overlooked:
4. Never forget to slag off America for not joining in British wars (Suez, the Falklands, etc.)
“wherever the WASP Empire went, trouble followed” Ho, ho, ho. That is rich. As in VERY. Let’s talk empire folks – Ottoman empire? Ask the Arabs and Armenians how they liked that bit. Russian empire? Ask the Estonians, Latvians, Poles, Azerbaijanis, Romanians, Checks, etc. how they liked that empire (which is what in fact the Soviet empire was). Belgian empire – ever hear of the Congo Free State and what happened there around the turn of the 20th Century? I bet many here have not. And then there is the French empire – can you say Departements d’Outre Mer? If you don’t know what those are, then you’re under-educated. And how did those Japanese treat the Koreans after they invaded their country multiple times? Bottom line, blaming WASPs on all the world’s troubles is an old falsehood, promulgated by a bunch of losers.
Michael in England has it exactly right. When will the government of the United States withdraw its troops from England and all of Europe. WWII has been over for over sixty-five years and Americans still maintain a military presence; is it not the right thing to let the Europeans fight their own wars. As far as Iraq and Afghanistan are concerned; what is the point of establishing democracy at such a great price of blood and money for a people who have no interest in it. If the Iraqis , Afghans , and now Iranis want democracy let them do the dying and the spending. The American government has got to stop being the world’s busy body.
Likewise the reactionary and isolationist lawmakers and presidents elected in the 1920s were not, I hasten to stress, hell-bent on bringing down the British Empire
Some of those lawmakers and presidents were also cognizant of the benefits that new and growing businesses conferred on the US in the form of general development and particularly expanding payrolls. Unlike Obama, they approved of capitalistic business activity. And in those days, one major contributor of financing to start or expand American businesses was the British banking system, which had a lot of capital and was looking for profitable investments.
It is all Bush’s fault.
We humans with our limited powers, necessarily attempt to simplify complex questions. But it is quite a stretch indeed to take a complex question of this magnitude and attempt to assign a nice neat simple answer such as your learned English friend did.
France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Irish nationalists, Indian nationalists, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and many others worked to dismantle the British Empire. Also assisting were some Democrats in America (notably Wilson, Joe Kennedy, and FDR) and some Liberals in Britain itself.
But if I am to myself oversimplify, it was WWI and the aftermath which set in course events which made inevitable (given the other forces enumerated) the fall of the British Empire. The debt, the loss of life, the toll on the national psyche, Versailles, the arrival of Wilson on the international stage, the Balfour Accord, and David Lloyd George were just too much.
We can all hope the age of empire is past, but let’s also give thanks that during the age of empire it was the British Empire that prevailed. Hail, indeed.
To Bohemond
Did I slag off America? I don’t think I did. No doubt the Americans could produce their own list. Perhaps they should retreat to their founding foreign policy – no meddling in foreign wars!
I am humbled by PJM bloggers’ erudition! Thank you for the interesting and varied views and facts. This might result in a sequel. I saw ‘Avatar’ lastnight for the second time and am convinced it is about bringing down…… well, I’ll try to write about it soon. Watch this space.
John A. SWcott:
With all due respect, I must disagree. Despite the fallout from 1914-18, the Empire’s fall was not inevitable. It was not inevitable even in 1945 (when the US did all in its power to prop up the British fiscus).
No, the primary blame lies with Clement Atlee and his Socialist government. Others may have contributed, but the sine qua non, the deciding factor, the death sentence, was Atlee’s decision to abandon the colonies to their fates.
But the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants DID royally screw the entire world.
Spoken like a jealous imperialst of the Left. Ending slavery, and implanting a system of law that is remarkable in dispensing justice (not the racist ‘social justice’ of the corrosive activist crowd) are two of the most beneficial acts ever given to humanity. But Bohemond beat me to noticing it.
Did America Bring Down the British Empire?
The wealth of nations is a function
of their manufacturing capabilities.
The variables in the Mfg. function
are: resources, skilled labor, capital,
and, overwhelmingly of late, innovation.
Financial, political, and military power
depend on creating, and inventing, wealth;
Gold ore in the ground is of no value.
Aluminium is an extremely expensive, low
strength metal, unless one knows how to
extract it from its ore economically, and
_exactly_ how to alloy and heat-treat it.
Let one example stand for all:
The Japanese built the battleship Musashi,
the US built submarines and dive bombers,
and invented the proximity fuze.
1. Never go to war to rescue the French. (WW1 & WW2)
you didn’t went to war to rescue us, but your own’s interests,
WW1, because germany broke the agreement set between England and Germany in 1829, that allowed a neutral Belgium to exist, in inviding it for the purpose of beating the French quicker than if they have tried through Alsace Lorraine, stipulated in von Schliessen plan
Also in doing so Germany was directly threatening english channel traffic, and the Brit navy
in WW2, we learnt the hard way that you weren’t ready to die for us, Dunkerque retreat anyone ? isn’t it bizarre that Germany invaded Belgium first ?
Also, Churchill in asing the US’ help, knew that it would mean the end of the British empire, thus he said that the economical future of England would be following the US policies like a poodle.
No, we see a broke US, and the poodle has no bone left, and that it now tries to hook the EU for some subsides
Churchill in asing -> Churchill in asKing, was ment
england was devestated by ww1-2; its administration-lite empire, improvised over the course of centuries, was no match for the ruthless methods of german, japanese and soviet imperialism. america did subvert british hold over some of its possessions out both an anti-colonial instinct consonant with the UN project and other intiatives quickly improvised as te US government awakened to the soviet threat, but british control was already quickly eroding before, during and after ww2. jk kelly’s ‘arabia, the gulf and the west’ is a wonderful source on this subject. the project was more one of convergence, where the badly hobbled british more or less voluntarily transfered their possessions to an american protectorate for strategic purposes or relinquished them altogether to indigenous quasi-anglofied, quasi-liberal elites masquerading as political parties. britain itself became part of pax americana, but this too was out of necessity. how could 60 million blase brits maintain their empire against 300 million predtory communists engaged in all the cunning operations of world leninist revolution? impossible. your old woman is just another relic of an age that was apparently incapable of understanding the power of the fully operational deathstar, something i find it increasingly difficult to understand.
France’s war debts to Britain; and France’s attempts to carve flesh in the form of war reparations from Germany. Otherwise, Americans were particularly isolationist during that time.
WTF, we have no debt to Britain !
the Versailles treaty was more benefitful to the Brits than it was for us, (they got the majority of the german and ottoman colonies)thus clemenceau’s remarck, it would settle peace for only 20 years for us
<iWhat I found so implausible about this assertion is the notion that American presidents, lawmakers, and ordinary citizens were sitting in their respective homes deliberating on the obliteration of an ally’s interests around the globe. What was America’s biggest obsession in the 1920s? My contention is that the Bolshevik revolution and rise of the Soviet Union was at the top of any leader’s list as that decade unfolded.
None of the British who believe the US undermined their Empire have ever asserted that it was at the top of America’s agenda. There was considerable hostility to the British Empire from presidents to the American media and when the opportunity arose FDR didn’t hesitate to stick the boot in.
Likewise the reactionary and isolationist lawmakers and presidents elected in the 1920s were not, I hasten to stress, hell-bent on bringing down the British Empire.
Most America Firsters opposed British imperialism. That was one of their main arguments: Why fight for the British Empire that we freed ourselves from in 18th century?
That said, the US merely finished off the British Empire. Britain had the stuffing knocked out of it by WW1 thanks to the misguided decision to become friends with France. So, although the US played its part the writing was on the wall.
But the White Anglo-Saxon Protestants DID royally screw the entire world.
Yeah, countries built by WASPs like the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand just didn’t work out!
Always nice to read articles of history from the housewife perspective. Many Brits do indeed, miss the good old days, when they ruled the roost. And, I would imagine that many Americans, like me, grow tired of being the Americans that have to do the dirty work because our country wants to rule the roost. But hey, at least when China finally takes over, we can both take a well deserved break. Dont you all agree?
I didn’t read all the comments but enough of what I did read supported the author’s contention but with far more accuracy. All of the American “intervention” occured after the Empire was effectively dead, primarily caused, as commenters, starting with #4 and continuing on, noted. The primary causes, were of course the Independence movement, well underway at the start of WWII and the near-bankruptcy of Great Britain, but, even without the latter, the Empire was doomed by the independence movement and the inconsistent support of the US.
To Commenter #35′s list of required reading, one must add, Arthur Herman’s To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World. The Brit’s introduction and implementation of civil service, their own and native, were instrumental in the successful independence movement in their colonies, especially India, but all, as opposed to the near universal failure of German, Belgian, French et al and not even counting the rape and pillage of the Japanese and Russian/Soviet. This administration evolved as it did in Britain. Don’t miss this fascinating and important history book.
Coisty,
had the stuffing knocked out of it by WW1 thanks to the misguided decision to become friends with France.
I suppose that you’re referring to the “Entente cordiale” alliance, though I am afraid to recall you that it happened before that WW1 broke, and indirectly was one of the reasons WW1 Broke
see what I wrote on the subject elsewhere :
In 1914 Germany decleared war to France first, after endorsing Austro Hungary empire velleity fot going to war against Serbia (which Germany had previously slowed down a year before, but as Russia was mobilising for helping its serbian brothers, and also that a war with Russia was already in von Schlieffen plans, and that these plans included a war against France first too, Germans generals believed that a war with France would end quickly (like in 1870) in favor of Germany, thus leaving the west front “appeased” then the german soldiers would be able to attack Russia with their optimum forces.
In the beginning of the events between Serbia and Austria, France didn’t think to get involved in that war, even Poincarré the president of France, was ignoring the german declaration of war, as he was on a ship travelling back from St Petersburg, even also the Russians didnt warn him that they were prepearing their war against Germany.
So the french mobilisation was made in a hurry, but people were glad to take a revenge against Germany (from the 1870 defeat)
The main objective being protecting Austria against Russia.
Not really, Germany powerful economy needed to expend her markets, and as they were eagering to invest the french colonies, the Serbian terrorist act was convenient (Germans had look for a convenient event since a while) (that Russia gave them on a tray) to decleare war towards France at the same time, convinced that they were the “strongests” in Europe, they wanted to undertake a new world order in their benefit.
The French were expecting a war against Germany anytime though, since a few incidents occured with Germany in Marocco in 1905, Germany wanted to annex it while the “entente cordiale” between France and England had alloted it to France, when the Brits got Egypt. So Germany tried to break this agreement with the Maroccan Sultan, which partly failed, France Spain and Germany shared the management of Marrocco. Though Germans still wanted more and intrigued remnently against France, and pushed Marocans to revolt in 1911 too. This still was not war, but the spirits of war were very ignified on both sides of the Rhein.
von schlieffen plans
http://www.worldwar1.com/tlwplans.htm
The weak part of this plan was the intentional violation of Belgian neutrality. Both Germany and Britain were among the signers of the 1839 treaty ensuring this neutrality. Bismarck warned that this violation would be folly in that it would drag Britain into the conflict.
The British Empire is no more..can someone tell the Brits to make their passports smaller..the passport is the same size as a copy of Lonesome Dove.
What we are encouraged to forget in this age when everyone wants to accuse empires of exploitation and crime (of which there was some, to be sure) is that the European empires were a great expense, and not wealth generators when all accounts are considered, a cost that was born, perhaps, as a way of mediating tensions caused by industrialization at home (you could let the industrial workers imagine themselves as part of a superior identity, and you could export troublesome aristocrats and warriors who didn’t have a place in a commercial civilization). Absent that consideration, it was an expense that would not have been born if global trade could have been organized without it. Thus who really is to blame for the idea, by mid-20thC – that the colonies were ready for independence (however bloody and tyrannical they turned out to be as independent states, this fate was not so obvious in, say, 1945)? Marry the “UN” idea that you no longer had to pay for colonies to insure global commerce and control global conflicts, with the white guilt that stemmed from the Holocaust and Hiroshima, and you have the ingredients for decolonization (empire understood as the absolute oppression figured by the asymmetry suggested by the Nazi/Jew relationship and the dropping of the bombs).
The US may not have been the main driver behind these trends but it certainly encouraged them. It basically sat out WWI, came late to WWII, and provided much more aid to continental Europe than to Britain after the war. Britain came out of the wars exhausted, bankrupt and angry that it had to pay full interest on its massive loans while the Germans got free money.
But another thing that needs be considered is the rather Gnostic attitude of American foreign policy. Roosevelt made a desperate Britain, in the Atlantic Charter, agree that in return for lend-lease, for a chance at surviving the Nazis, the post-war world would be structured not by imperial systems of control but by the magical solution of the “United Nations”. In other words, American foreign policy has been intentionally focused on the belief that if we only destroy existing power structures, peace and harmony will prevail when essentially good people get together to talk on their own two feet. American foreign policy since Roosevelt or maybe Wilson has often been about the creation of power vacuums, turning away from allies facing enemies, in attempts to bring “peace” to the world. Thus the US left much of eastern Europe, CHina, SE Asia to the Communists in the name of “peace”. Obama is the ultimate in this world view, backing away from Eastern Europe on missile defense, leaving ISrael, India, Japan, etc., quite unsure about where they stand. All this in service of America’s frequently favoured policy: the Gnostic dream of transcending this fallen world of conflict.
Britain, on it’s knees siocially and economically after WW1 had already accepted that the colonisl system was no longer viable. After WW2 we were judt not strong enough to hond the Empire.
With the decline of the world’s foremost industrial and economic power and other long term contenders similarly debilitated America saw an opportunity and grabbed it.
Who can blame the USA for that? It is after all what we did when Spain began to decline.
I love the Brits. Every country they fiddled with has done better than those without. But they lost their own empire via a collection of blunders.
Nonetheless, I too have seen this idea creeping into their papers and books. Most recently, I believe Max Hastings, a great historian, was wondering if the Brits could have saved their empire by doing a deal with Hitler and not being the “holdout” against the Nazis. Silly of course: coddling up to Hitler had bene tried by everyone else too.
Here is why I think the British empire faded away:
1. 1776 ought to have been a wet towel across the face of all British rulers. But they never mastered the art of folding the dominions, as they were pleased to refer to Australia, Canada and India, into the empire. The Romans did. They made people roman citizens. In the US after one generation, Italians, Irish etc were as American as anyone else. The Brits, however, excluded everyone else: indian officers fighting the japanese were banned from british clubs. In Singapore, there were the Brits and everyone else. They never folded the canadians in either, regarding them as some form of half breed americans.
The result: as the places grew, the distinctions established and maintained by the Brits grew too. Eventually, they all pulled away. Even the canadians who fought well in WWII and had the third largest surface fleet in the world. By WWII they had all pushed for more independence and gotten it. Their loyalty could be hoped for but not counted on.
2. They got soft: their navy and airforce were terrific, but the army….Singapore fell to a smaller number of Japanese troops; it was never fully fortified which surprised evryone but the japanese. It had no tanks. Pooly sited airfields and crummy aircraft. LOSS=their fault.
3. They stopped having kids. By WWII the US totalled 120 million. The Brits about 45 million. The Germans about 70 million. All the pensions, welfare acts etc didn’t increase their population at all. The population of the dominions had surged.
4. Their unions choked the life out of them. The coal miners and others drove capital out of the UK and into–here!
5. They lost the ability to control the oilfields and possessions. They had no right to expect anyone else to devote money and troops to help them.
I love them. I really do. And respect them. But they lost it. No one took it form them.
Claude Marie,
Clarification: According to Ahamed, at the end of WWI, the European allied powers owed the U.S. $12 billion, of which $5 billion was owed by Britain and $4 billion by France. Britain was owed $11 billion by its European allies, including $3 billion from France. (Lords of Finance, pp. 130-131) Britain broke itself in the attempt to reverse the wartime inflation, to get back on the Gold Standard at pre-war exchange levels, rather than devalue its currency. This marked the end of British dominance of the financial world.
Alston #26 is also correct: Anyone who counts them as out is a fool.
The blame for the decision to rack the British economy and financial world rests squarely on its central banker, Norman Montagu, who persuaded Churchill of the necessity of returning to the pre-war exchange rates of the Gold Standard.
an exterpt of a conversation between Roosevelt and Churchill where independence of the Brit colonies is evocated (I expect the French’s too). The deal was, if America was helping Europe to fight the evil Nazis, that the colonies must benefit of the “free marsket” rules too, thus becoming unalienated from their imperial metropole
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_1-9/2007_1-9/2007-7/pdf/7-8_707_feat-2.pdf
Actually, as an historian of Modern Europe before turning to a more lucrative dark side, I think the evidence would show that while America was not “the” cause of Britain’s loss of empire, our policies, and the sympathies of our intellectual and governing classes were generally hostile to Britain’s post-WWII maintenance of its Empire.
First and foremost, Britain lost it’s empire as a result of a failure of nerve to engage in the level of repression necessary to maintain the Empire – the watershed event quite possibly being the Amritsar Massacre in 1919, although there were rather different hints of weakness in the Curragh Incident of 1914 with Army resistance to enforcement of the Home Rule Bill. The hugh losses Britain sustained in World War I may well have soured the British public on the sort of dirty work running the Empire required, especially in the face of the growing independence movements in many parts of the Empire, fueled heavily by the Wilsonian rhetoric about self-determination.
The intellectual climate in both Britain and America after World War I was hostile to Empire, the socialists and the left generally in the lead. That’s not a distinctly American contribution to the decline of the Empire, but during most of the 1930s, the American administration of Franklin Roosevelt was at the same time pro-Britain and hostile to the long-term existence of empire – including our own possession of the Philippines which were slated for independence in the late 1940s.
After World War II, our diplomacy was generally supportive of movements for independence in the European colonies (we were very reluctant to have the French and Dutch return to the Far East, though we acquiesced because we needed them in Europe). In short, we didn’t “cause” the loss of empire, but we were certainly cheering it along.
Suez, of course, was an out and out muscling of both the British and French out of a significant post-colonial role in the Middle East, and cost Britain much prestige and contributed — along with the cost — to the final withdrawal from everything East of Suez in 1967.
I read lots of books, and I’ve read a lot of stuff with regards to history. World War II is one of my areas of specialty, and so you occasionally run into books claiming that the British Empire fell because of American actions in World War II. The theory, generally, says that Churchill was trying to fight the war to defeat the Nazis and Japanese, and at the same time preserve the British Empire, while America’s goals were solely directed towards defeating out enemies. The whole thing is usually told in a somewhat condescending tone, with world-wise, sophisticated Brits being outvoted by naive, over-confident Americans. In the European campaign, (yes it gets this specific sometimes) the argument centers on the debate between Churchill and his generals on the one hand, and their American counterparts on the other, with Stalin supporting the Americans long distance (which makes the American position suspect, of course). Churchill and his British generals wanted to nibble around the edges of Hitler’s empire in Europe, landing first in Italy, then Greece, then advancing through the Balkans. The American strategy was the one we chose, landing in France and advancing directly towards Germany, more or less. The British feared this would lead to a World War I style trench warfare campaign, and were terrified at the prospect of the casualties. It didn’t pan out that way, of course, and we won, so the debate died.
Later, someone suggested that Churchill’s strategy was intended to preserve the British Empire after the war, and that Roosevelt’s refusal to back Churchill led to the end of the British Empire. It’s hard to see how this is the case: what killed the British Empire was the length of the war (which bankrupted Britain) and the fact that the Allies were constantly proclaiming how they were opposing Nazi “tyranny” and in favor of “freedom”. Various colonial soldiers took this to mean freedom for Europeans, and some sort of bondage for them, and they were (naturally) unimpressed with the system. Remember, the British colonial army fought in pretty much all four corners of the world, and for many of the men involved, it was the first time they were more than a few miles from their villages.
The war both in Europe and in Asia was fought for different reasons, based on different strategic visions of how victory could be achieved. One of the better examples of the debate was the Pacific war fought against the Japanese. Japan attacked the European colonial Empires, and the United States, in December 1941, and conquered a vast array of territory in approximately 4-5 months. The difficulty with the way they conducted their campaign was that it left them very vulnerable to attack from the sea (notably the Doolittle bombing attack in 1942, and the subsequent island-hopping campaign that eventually approached Japan proper). This vulnerability rendered the Japanese campaign in Burma and later on the Indian border futile, because if Japan was attacked directly and devastated, capturing a city or two in India would have been meaningless. Nevertheless, the British (terribly short of manpower and equipment in Europe, at this stage) insisted on devoting considerable resources to liberating Burma (which happened only at the very end of the war) and protecting India. The Allied Headquarters from which this effort was directed was known as SouthEast Asia Command, or SEAC for short. Americans who served there insisted the initials stood for “Save England’s Asiatic Colonies”.
So basically the British view that America caused the fall of the British Empire is mostly predicated on the idea we could have saved it, if we had chosen to do so. Why a former colony would do this is rather confusing. If you think about it for a second, it’s also a bit hard to imagine it happening: American boys being sent overseas to fight to preserve the British Empire? The British might like the idea; I seriously doubt Americans, then or now, would approve.
Oh, and as a humble assist to your research, Carol, should you choose to continue, I’ll see if I can recommend some books. I once read a book that pushes this theory:
http://www.amazon.com/Aegean-Adventures-1940-43-Churchills-Dream/dp/0863327885/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263070996&sr=8-5
If you take it right it’s actually rather funny, but the politics of the author are the British equivalent of a Klansman (by the end of the book he’s denouncing Nelson Mandela for opposing Apartheid). There’s another author with whom I’m familiar, though I’ve never read any of his books, named John Charmley, who had a book on Churchill. If I remember right, his thesis is that the blame is Churchill’s, because he allied himself with Roosevelt. It rather looked from the blurb on the back that Pat Buchanan’s The Unnecessary War would use it in the bibliography. I just looked at the Amazon page for Buchanan’s book, and it reminded me that Niall Ferguson has put forward a version of this argument, also…though his is that the British sacrificed their empire voluntarily, to keep the Nazis and Italians from getting one too. *Yawn*. At this point things get a bit convoluted…
I would point out that the UK declared war in 1939 not to “save France” (which appeared, at the time, to be perfectly capable of handling the Germans’ smaller army), but rather in response to the invasion of Poland, whose security Britain and France had guaranteed.
————-
michael: No, you didn’t- but I have heard it ad nauseam from legions of other Yank-bashing Brits.
“and provided much more aid to continental Europe than to Britain after the war. Britain came out of the wars exhausted, bankrupt and angry that it had to pay full interest on its massive loans while the Germans got free money.”
Sorry, that’s simply untrue, although many Brits believe it.
The UK received more Marshall Plan aid than any other country- you can look it up. Moreover, the US knocked down Britain’s war debt to 2 bob on the pound- that’s right, we wrote off 90% of it – and then were willing to amortize it over 60 years. The debt principal was in fact less than the *free* Marshall money.
@ Marie Claude: Thank you for the French point of view, it is refreshing and different from the rest, rather valuable in its way.
@ Michael (in England) and John ONeal: were I the one in power in the US, I’d consider taking you up on your offer quite seriously, including the rest of Europe as well and extending the same courtesy to Japan and allowing South Korea to make their decision to have any troops, intell, etc of America there at all. Considering the events of 2009 in America I believe that these and other desires will happen over a not too unreasonable amount of time.
Whitworth Jason
But did we repay back the money ?
I read that the american fellahs were saying “Lafayette nous voilà” when they landed onto the french battle ground though, meaning that that was their repay back for a moral debt that they owed us since their independance war.
Now, I know that America did help us otherwise too, with money lending, arms, heavy material that couldn’t be manufactured in our country, for the good reason that the working class men were in the trenches
I don’t suppose it occurred to your host that colonialism (“British Empire”) was a 19th century construct that couldn’t possibly survive in the 20th century of rising nationalism.
As far as Britain being our most steadfast ally, that was true until The Messiah Gang and their ideological counterparts in Britain took over.
“the three nations were abandoned at the crucial hour by the United States.”
That statement is inaccurate. All three nations were told ahead of time what would happen if they continued with their attempt to seize the Canal. Ike wasn’t playing, was he? Meanwhile, the miss-use of French and British military assets let the Soviets stomp the freedom movements in Poland and Hungary.
The actual event that destroyed the “Empire” was the battle of the Somme. A small nation like England doesn’t lose 60,000 young men in a day and recover from it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Somme_%281916%29
AS far as your friend goes, she is basically correct. The USA has been working to destroy tyranny since America’s inception in the late 18th century. Most Americans are proud of having brought down so many tyrants. English tyrants were among them. Cromwell started it, but it was the USA that finished the job. First France in 1789, with a direct revolution encouraged by the American ambassador. Then the slow fire of social change in Britain.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook20.html
This all culminated in WW2, when the Americans told the English that not one single American was going to die to save the English Empire. And none did.
Colonialism is an evil practice. No better then slavery.
Meanwhile, it is NO accident that the US is the worlds only superpower. Read your Mahan. On a planet that is 74% Ocean, the nation that controls those Oceans controls the planet. The US Navy bagan it’s efforts in the mid 19th century. 100 years later, we controlled the seas.
Britain could have kept their control of the sea, but they chose not to. The English decided they would rather be a minor European nation then a world power. Churchill could have refused the American offer and kept the Empire, giving Europe to the Germans, at least for a few years/decades. His ego got in the way and he thought FDR didn’t really mean it. Making peace with Hitler would have saved the Empire, for a while. In the end, it would have worked out pretty much like it did today. Germany CANNOT be a world power, since they are not a maritime nation. Germany can rule Europe, which it is poised to do today. The Lisbon treaty is Germany taking with diplomacy what they were never able to take with force.
What Europeans call the EU is what a rational observer would call the 5th Reich.
Identity politics, (in terms of dismantling identity in favor of a uniformity of dispositions), will end all…Behavioral Conditioning becomes all that is left….In defense, this seems to force societies back into states of tribalism under corporate demeanors. Thus, “Greed is Good” because it emphasizes one’s ability to compete which is being undermined by the restraints imposed on one’s God-given identity.
But there is an ego that must mandate those restraints so corporations have incentive. Because it is ego alone it lacks apparent identity.
So much for the classical term of “Empire”.
Although the seeds were sown by Wilson’s self-determination idea in 14 points, the empire dissolved in an independance movement that coincided with the American civil rights movement. America needed comgruent policies.
However, I think if you dig further, you will also find sentiment that seeks to minimize American role in winning WWII. I find it in Holland. Antiamericanism grows out of resentment over losing past prominence. There is nothing Americans can do about it except realize that it is lonely at the top. It is a form of denial to boost self esteem.
to Slave owners and racists and failures like “Joseph Conrad failed superstar”
The world had a hundred thousand years to do stuff and all (simplified a bit) the majority of the world (meaning non whites) did was invent and keep slaves and slavery and built stone buildings and mud huts. Throw in some paper and gunpowder and a few statues and a little math and logic and a pyramid or two and you have it.
In 500 years White people freed the slaves, explored the earth, went to the moon, and invented everything.
Because of White people slaves are freed. Racist slavers like Joseph do not like that. Because of White people everyone can live better than a King could a hundred years ago. The slavers and greenies do not like that.
The world is jealous of and hates a minority that succeeded in 500 years where they failed for a hundred thousand years.
Meanwhile, it is NO accident that the US is the worlds only superpower.
WWI did help to boost your economy, your navy was insignificant before the war, your aviation wasn’t significant too, but at the end of the war from a country that had 4$ billions debt it passed to more than 11$ billion benefit.
In the meanwhile it gave you the opportunity that you could play a role in world affairs, it consolidated you in the necessity of keeping an important army and navy and an identy of a powerful country whereas, you had complexes before( army and navy which were insignificant before, even you had difficulties to enrol volontaries in the first place, because of your isolationist statut from the origin, and that Wilson didn’t want to import the european conflict into America, german community was about 8 millions, italian, 2 millions, Brits, 2 millions…)
Role that didn’t cease to increase since then.
BTW, it was the French that helped you to create the base of your aviation as an industry, in sending into America our ingeeners in 1916 1917
Did the the US bring down the British Empire? No, it didn’t. The British Empire imploded under its own weight. That socialist-realist guilt got rid of the rest of it. Doesn’t matter that many of the countries it gave independence to are far worse off than they were under empire… ie: Zimbabwe.
Bohemond, 69,
Thanks for the correction. I had forgotten how much Marshall aid the UK received, and perhaps squandered on the last days of empire, remembering rather more the resentful myth one hears often from Britain. The question of “writing down” the war debt however strikes me as more open to interpretation. Yes Britain had to pay back a fraction of the value of the war materiel it received under lend-lease; but how justified is the Brit resentment that they had to pay back any at all? What should have been the US financial contribution to defeating the Nazis? War debts often go unpaid, by losers especially.
Anyway, one question that might be worth throwing into the mix is to what degree have Britains ever really wanted an empire? On one level they obviously took that path when commercial expansion and settlement abroad demanded it; on another, English identity never really accommodated itself to an imperial identity. The English have always tended to insularity and it is really only after the empire has collapsed that they have allowed London to become fully a place where the children of empire come to make careers and lives. Parliamentary democracy is not something that can be organized on a transnational basis, it seems to me. To people who truly value self-ruling government, it has always been clear that empire has to give way to independence for former colonies. Indeed, it is often under-appreciated that the American Revolution was necessary because the English didn’t want Americans sharing in power and Parliament in London because the English were rather more insular than imperial in intent. One little aspect of Canadian history in the early decades of the 20thC was the phenomenon of Canucks who dreamed of some grand Imperial Federation, a globe-straddling super Parliament, something the English never had much interest in. ON the whole, they have wanted to remain insular at home and not attempt some truly imperial form of government (the kind of thing that might have attracted would-be American separatist leaderss to share in imperial power). IN this the British Empire was different than say the French.
In comparison, post-WWII America has been neither the insular, primarily self-interested nation, nor the serious empire; it has looked for a third way, some vaguely idealized “internationalism” and I don’t think it has really found it yet and am not sure it ever will.
Concerning your “lingua franca” comment. I think that the whole world needs a modern lingua franca, as well
My vote goes to the planned language, Esperanto. I say this as a native English speaker!
Your readers may be interested in the following video which can be seen at http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU Professor Piron was a translator for the United Nations in Geneva
A glimpse of the Esperanto language can be seen at http://www.lernu.net
It seems the majority of people are ignoring the simple truth. Instead of defending America against self righteous euros and others who blame America for all of their ills because it is easier than accepting personal responsibility for their failures and instead of bashing other nations for what they have or haven’t done let us acknowledge, Empires Fall From Within.
Every great nation from the beginning of time has sown the seeds of its own destruction through political, social and economic choices. Anyone with their eyes open can see that America is going down the same path. It isn’t Muslim extremists, it isn’t far left liberals or greedy corporate managers or Euro transplants, there are no foreign nations that have any power to do anything to America. When Nations/Empires abandon the principles and practices that make them what the are they can no longer stand.
The British Empire was built upon technological and military superiority and ruling with an iron fist. The moment they allowed their arrogance to surpass their ability, they began to fall. They stopped striving to be better and settled for believing that they were better. The Japanese suffered the same fate. The Romans, the same. They say that history is destined to repeat itself and to date, no one has stood up and defied it to be so.
The British Empire was brought down by its welfare system.
“american fellahs were saying “Lafayette nous voilà” when they landed onto the french battle ground though, meaning that that was their repay back for a moral debt that they owed us since their independance war.”
Sorry Marie, but the US Payback for the French fleet’s help off Yorktown was the 192 grain ships sent to France in 1792. That shipment saved the revolution. Granted, it was the French fleet that held off the Royal navy long enough for the AMERICAN ships to get to harbor, but it was American grain. Freely given to the French. In return the French sent us the Statue of Liberty.
And as far as the US military, The Navy was world class from the Early 19th century on. We went toe to toe with the Royal Navy and did most of the heavy lifting against pirates. First navy to use steam, first navy to use the screw propeller, first submarine, revolving turrets, First aircraft from ships, etc.
The Army wasn’t much until post WW2, but that was intentional. As a nation, the USA was more worried about the Army seizing power then being invaded. So the Army was kept small.
In WW1 the US Army Air Corps used French fighters because it was easier to ship men to France then aircraft. America manufactured the best aircraft engine ( Liberty) and one of the best airframes (JN-1).
The British had the best allied aircraft in WW1 with their Sopwith Camel, which did use a French engine. The airframe was hard to build, so the Brits couldn’t manufacture the quantity needed. That is why the US ended up with Newports and SPAD’s. Both good aircraft for the time, but inferior to the Sopwith and the Fokker.
I am an anglophile and truly believe in the magnanimity of the British people. If the British did not prevail over Napoleon Bonaparte, the history of mankind would have been a lot worse than what it is now. Is it possible we would be under Nazism or communism right now? Just look at how prosperous and considerably peaceful all the commonwealth countries compared to the other countries colonized and exploited by the Europeans. The Brits gave up their colonies and independence without too much bloodshed and never returned to interfere in their political affairs. And what about our great neighbor to the north, Canada. Ever ponder the thought of what it would be like to have the French as our neighbor had the British not beat them?
Humankind should be grateful to the British people for whatever they have given us. Knowing the alternatives, it could have been a lot worse.
George Orwell wrote about this in “England Your England” here
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_eye
The fall of empire part is at the begining of section 5.
He says it was the telegraph that killed the empire. Prior to the telegraph the empire was a “starfish” organization of independent adventurers exercising immediate local control. After the telegraph it was all London bureaucrats running things at a distance. Also pre-telegraph the imperialists could gain vast fortunes, so the career attracted the best and brightest. Post-telegraph this was no longer possible so the career attracted typical civil service types.
It’s an interesting article. Not sure if he’s right, but I do recall reading an interview with John Rhys-Davies, where he talks about his father administering a river town in Africa and having slave trader boats coming through. His father wanted to storm the boats and free the slaves, but orders from London said not to interfere.
My country had two empires. The first became the USA and Canada. The second was largely based on India. Although we were proud of them, we didn’t go out of our way to acquire them. Trade and war with France were the main driving forces. We lost the first one but then became friends and allies of the North Americans. We lost the second one, but out of that came Australia, New Zealand and India. In spite of various hiccups I think we were rather gracious about the changes that occurred. Notice how the empires of the other Europeans left no great democracies behind. Belgium Congo anyone? French Algeria?
Things have changed though. So I stick to my original plan for my country. No French wars, no American wars.
Love & Kisses
Michael
John “birther” samford
this would be a nice legend, but unfortunately untrue
the only american personality that still was francophile was Jefferson, and he resigned from Washingston’s cabinet, le dit “Sieur Whashington” signed the “Jay treaty” with England, to the damn of the French.
The 198 grain ships weren’t destinated to France, might be that some were destinated to the French West Indies, but not gratuitous, that English were pirating, also that they repay back to America after the Jay agreement
Jefferson was still upset by U.S. policy toward France. He believed that the United States should back France because France had supported the United States during the Revolutionary War. Hamilton, on the other hand, was pro-British. He hoped to strengthen trading ties with Britain—the most powerful trading nation in the world at the time. Jefferson thought that Hamilton had too much influence on the president’s foreign policy and that Hamilton consequently interfered with Jefferson’s role as secretary of
state. Jefferson decided to resign from Washington’s cabinet in 1973.
http://armstrong-history.wikispaces.com/file/view/Washington's+Presidency.pdf
In order to disrupt completely the German economy, the Entente countries, at the instigation of France, in 1915 established a blockade of the sea coasts of Germany. Through their evident naval supremacy the allies deprived Germany of any direct sea trade. Yet initially hostile to the introduction of this blockade and still officially neutral, the United States, are now forced to expand trade cooperation with France, England and, to a lesser extent, Italy to keep their economic activity.
Thus, from 1914 to 1916, U.S. exports destined for Germany will then decrease significantly from 169 million to 1 million
dollars while those to the Entente countries quadrupled from
824 million to 3.2 billion dollars. France and England continued to spend their foreign assets to buy raw materials, cereals and products
manufactured in the United States and for borrowing deposit
So Wilson’s help wasn’t spontaneous
http://www.college.interarmees.defense.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/LAPRAY_CDT_B4_article_Tribune_v4-2.pdf
Mike in England I am amused by your self congratulation, but wasn’t Sierra Leone, zimbabwe, Southern Africa, Nigeria, Yemen, Palestine, Irak, Iran to a cerain level), Afghanistan… not Brits colonies, I don’t see that they were and or are true democraties
“Belgian congo”, isn’t by definition french, but Cameroun, Mali, Togo, … Maroc, Tunisia, Algeria (even with a crual war was and above is now)… I don’t see that they were worst managed, actually they have less quarrels casualties.
Amorsolo, I have a regret, that our king got broke for you, you’d be much better to lick the Brits feet nowadays too
It is beguiling to me that Wilson’s America eschewed the European conflicts out of rational for its own insular interests, while today’s America embraces diversity imperatives in terms of “race” at the expense, though at the behest, of its European heritage and legacy, (i.e. the congruent civil rights movements). By what rational does this attribute arise? Corporate demeanor? Messiah Complex? Superego? A compromised consensus at the end of WWII? Or the heady cocktail which mixes them all?
That cocktail’s potency most likely lies in the large swath of the middle class which insulates the calculating pettiness and crookedness of the poor from the calculating pettiness and crookedness of the rich in America.
In a way, it suggests to me the same motivations one could ascertain when discussing the US Civil War, (and in terms of the divisions of India and Korea one can make projections based on their relevancy with the US in regards to calculations.) That perhaps, in the Civil War, the Northern Industries of New England saw the rising Southern Industries prospering by the same methods (in terms of labor) that established the Northern elite, so it was perceived as threat to the Northern foundation and economy as it related to the Old World, (and therein is the real threat of China accumulating and hording the American dollar to advance it’s preeminence). Hence, slavery “needed” to be “abolished” to retard the unregulated growth of Southern preeminence, which was based in the influx of European immigration.
It should come as no surprise then, that those who serve to gain the most from “racial” imperatives have focused their aims and intent on infiltrating the American middle class. I have found in China, there is no middle class here. As I am sure it is the same in Africa, Mexico…etc…Therefore, for an outsider, there is no sanctuary in these worlds comparable or as vulnerable as the United States… For me, it seems the American has strayed too far into Dogville with this century.
Great discussion. The subject is too big to get much agreement. I lived in Canada 23 years so that makes me an expert. The United Empire Loyalists who fled to New Brunswick and eastern Ontario, having debated monarchy and self government with the Sons of Liberty types for years, arrived in Canada with far more liberal views than the locals. I think that, plus the sobering loss of the 13 colonies made English Canada more an extension of England than a colony. They dropped the model of a subjected Ireland, which had so alarmed Franklin. One of the factors mentioned is losing a stomach for repression as a necessary part of keeping colonies. This may be why former colonies are quite proud to be part of the British Commonwealth. On the subject of France: Why Brittany and Normandy were not returned to the UK after we Anglophones saved France twice I’ll never understand.
Why Brittany and Normandy were not returned to the UK after we Anglophones saved France twice I’ll never understand
Because Brittany and Normandy were french before UK could claim a mere existence, and that they civilised your country with William the conquistador, besides, your inoffensive elders are all over our place
You didn’t save us for our own sake, but much more because a nazified and or a sovietised France would have meant the end of your baked beans
To Marie Claude
I only mentioned Australia, New Zealand and India because they are great democracies, as is the USA and Canada. I quite agree that the rest are not much of a triumph for the British Empire. The French Empire did not produce a single great democracy and I included the Belgian Congo because it is part of your country’s cherished Francosphere. Anybody who thinks Mali etc are democracies is on the Planet Zog.
If I was an American I would look out at the world and conclude that there are only four countries I could depend on – UK, Canada, Australia & New Zealand. As an Englishman I come to the same conclusion.
The EIR piece to which Marie-Claude linked, on FDR vs. Churchill, brings to mind some other EIR articles, which are the best around in investigating the
true history of America’s fight against the British Empire. See for example, the following:
How the US fought Britain and France’s Sykes-Picot carve-up of the Middle East http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2009/3603us_fought_sykes.html
“When Americans Fought For Iran’s Sovereignty” http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2009/2009_30-39/2009_30-39/2009-32/pdf/42-65_3632.pdf
“American Patriots Against the British Imperialists” http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2008/3506americans_v_british.html
The record has been spotty, to be sure. With traitors like Wilson and Truman, as often as not we trailed the British around the globe trying to save their empire — which still exists, by the way, in terms of financial control, no longer through a formal colonial system.
American patriots understood from the beginning that free trade was the essence of the Empire. That’s why patriots always opposed the British Free Trade system — Republicans like Lincoln and McKinley understood this, in a way today’s Republicans have forgotten. Marie-Claude is 100% wrong to call Hamilton pro-British; his three reports were a road map for freeing ourselves from the British Empire, not to mention an attack on Adam Smith. The forgotten “American System of Political Economy” — national banking, public improvements, and protection and promotion of industry — poses the issue of Republic vs. Empire clearly.
Michael, but you made all your possible to eradicate us from America, and still you forgot to mention Quebec as one of our colonies there
ah then Belgium is France, uh not in history books, and I defy you to find Mali as having the same problems as one of the above quoted african english colonies
Gary,
Because Brittany and Normandy were french before UK could claim a mere existence, and if you still want to request them as a Brits possession, then another Joan of Arc will push you into the channel
and I maintain, You didn’t save us for our own sake, but much more because a nazified and or a sovietised France would have meant the end of your baked beans
Ms. Gould:
“This dear lady is a cultured and well-read individual and can be a formidable debater. I kept quiet as she explained that a succession of American administrations had set out to dismantle British hegemony in the world. Be it India, Africa, Palestine, Suez, Northern Ireland, or lands further afield, she said the Americans had been hell-bent on making sure the centuries-old colonial structure was undermined and then brought to an end wherever it may lurk.”
Arrant nonsense. If the lady is as well-read and cultured as she thinks she is, then surely she can reflect on the fact that the British Empire was founded by the prowess of her arms, and consolidated by a policy which encouraged the emigration of her peoples.
Despite the fact that the poofters back in Blighty insisted on treating these emigrants as “Colonials”, most of these emigrant cultures remained loyal to the Monarchy…and the graves of Canadians and South Africans and Aussies and Kiwis in Northwestern Europe and the shores of the Mediterranean attest to this fact.
Contrast that with the policies of unfettered immigration since 1945, and in recent history the use of immigration as a deliberate political weapon with which to flail the British culture and way of life, and really, that’s all that need be said, isn’t it?
Certainly one would expect a healthy appetite for the written word and a steeping in culture should lead to a good instinct for honest insight, shouldn’t one?
The Empire ended when the UK stopped sending colonists OUT and started letting colonials IN.
My original post was to say what I would like my country to do in the future – basically, free ourselves of the French and the Americans.
Now we are having lots of often inaccurate posts about the past.
By the way Marie Claude, I have spent some time in Brittany and Normandy and I would say that many of the people there don’t think they are French.
Michael, I was born in Brittany, and as such I would still advocate that I’m “Britton” first, but that our patry is France
I had English friends converting a barn in Normandy. 50 yards away was an elderly farmer – Mr Robartes. He had been a POW with the Germans and insisted on talking to me in his mangled German. Which was better than my mangled French. He disliked:
1. Parisians.
2. Germans
3. Parisians
4. The French
5. Parisians.
He seemed OK about the English.
Marie-Claude:
“your navy was insignificant before the war, your aviation wasn’t significant too”
The first is untrue, and the second true of everyone. Nobody had an effective military aircraft in August 1914; and the US Navy from a standing start had built a battle fleet as large as Germany’s, with ships nearly as good as Britain’s (we designed the ‘dreadnought’ battleship before the RN, but HMS Dreadnought was built faster).
“The British had the best allied aircraft in WW1 with their Sopwith Camel”
Sorry, the Camel wasn’t even the best Sopwith, much less the best fighter- Tommy S’s Triplane and Snipe were both superior. The Camel was a treacherous beast, which killed more RAF pilots than Germans. (Its nasty snap torque-rolls were tactically useful- but only in the hands of the most skilled pilots). The best British fighter, in just about every category, was the S.E.5a- which still wasn’t as good as the Fokker D.VII, easily the best fighter of the war.
The SPAD wasn’t bad, though: fast, forgiving, tough, and dove like a demon- much like the SE5 in fact.
Michael
we all have some grades of contempt for the Parisians, in spite of one of my son has become one’s, but fortunately his job keeps him away from Paris most of the time
as for the French, they can be such a**holes too, especially when they travel, not me though, thanks to my young years in working in foreign countries, or with foreigners
Bohemond, I was merely reproducing an article, but probably that the author ment a military navy
JK Weiser
I read the articles, indeed we had our lot of guiltinesss for the nowadays conflicts, thaough, I am not one who took benefits from our empire, and I wouldn’t advocate one today, but most of the politicians aren’t on the same wave
By the way Marie Claude, I have spent some time in Brittany and Normandy and I would say that many of the people there don’t think they are French.
Last time I was in Normandy in front of an official building were displayed the Norman and the American flags. That is all. No French flag. Now I suggest that where there is place for 50 stars you can fit a fifty-first but don’t say it to Marie Claude.
Michael, but you made all your possible to eradicate us from America, and still you forgot to mention Quebec as one of our colonies there
-in what sense was la Nouvelle France a colony? By the time of the British conquest, after 150 years of settlement, it had a population 60 000 spread over a large area from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson’s Bay; among other things, it did not have a single printing press. In other words, the most populated, and for a time strongest, wealthiest, country in Europe did next to nothing compared to the free English men and women in colonizing North America. New France was part a mercantile outpost, and part a new frontier for a few peasants supporting those outposts. The Canadiens settled along the rivers of New France in farms that were spread out like jewels on a riverine necklace. THe peasants lived in isolated farm houses and not in villages like their French cousins. While they lived under a system of feudal tenure, they were already different in many respects from their French cousins, not least because they had to become “French” more quickly than peasants in France. While New France mostly drew on people from northwest France, it had people coming together from all over and so a common modern “French” identity rose more quickly at the expense of the older regional ones. In many respects, New France was the lead and France the unworthy, reluctant follower who in the end bargained away New France in its peace treaties with the English. I really don’t see how France has much of a claim on the Frenchness of parts of North America.
JFM, must be because the place is an american property in Normandy province
Evidently, gratitude is not a French trait.
Although there have been intermittent times of bad relations between the US, and the Uk; America has never directly tried to end the British Empire. I would say that America stopping the Barbary Coast pirates, and entering WW1 helped England more than we ever hurt it. England did not have to pay the tributes to the pirates, and in WW1 gained massive oil rich regions from the Ottoman Empire. America also sold a massive quantity of silver, at a extremely low price to support the Pound when the British needed to pay for India. the only time that America has fought England after the Revolution was the war of 1812, and that was because the English were capturing American shipping vessels, and forcing the sailors on-board to serve under the Crown. England’s Empire ended because Empires are to expensive to run. Every Empire that has ever existed puts more money into the colonies than they get out.
truepeers:
<i<New France was part a mercantile outpost, and part a new frontier for a few peasants supporting those outposts
what was the rest of America, but also that too
you forgot the inner nemerous wars between the french and english settlers, (as well as somewhere on seas between France and England), a famous one that ended with the Paris treaty in 1763, the “Indian war” which removed the French from almost all the northern America continent, the organised “genocide” and deportation of the french recalcitrants by the Brits, fortunately some managed to stay alive, the Acadians culture still witnesses of their identity, which corresponds a bit to what was our population alike in 17th and 18th centuries
You forgot the heroic Montcalm that saved what you contemptly regrard as the New France, from being annexed by the English.
If I wrote that Quebec was a french colony, it’s because the Quebequois used to consider it so, not anymore, neither an english one too, but more like an autonom and strong identified culture.
I really don’t see how France has much of a claim on the Frenchness of parts of North America.
tell that to the Louisianeses cajun !
what was the rest of America, but also that too
-well, technically speaking, the English-American colonists were not peasants since they did not have to pay/perform feudal obligations and if they owned land it was freely held. Furthermore, many English-American farmers were focused on staple crops for exports – i.e. they were capitalists – while French Canada was rather less a commercialized agriculture. But I was really not making a serious point beyond suggesting the paradox that the Canadiens were moving beyond their France Frenchness and developing a distinctive New World Frenchness while the French state did little to encourage colonization. So whose colony was it? I don’t mean to forget the travails of les Acadiens, nor aristocratic French military exploits; I was just reflecting on the fact that I don’t tend to think of French-Canadians as Francais pure-laine – even in the context of 18thC history; if anything they are perhaps Francais avant la lettre, and different today for that. And the proof, I think, is in their choice of swear words. Tabernouche!
#107 truepeers
what is your point then ? that the french Canadians are touchy about their frenchness ? you would be too in their situation
I don’t see the difference with the french speaking settlers, I don’t rememnber thay had to pay/perform feodal obligations too, some owned their land too, like some english settlers didn’t came with the Mayfair, and had to look for work by land owners or in manufactories
I agree though that the french Canadians couldn’t manage a commercialised agriculture, for good reasons, Climate, though they commercialised animals skins, they fished, BTW the fishings reserves of the French along the north west coasts were the subject of quarrels (and still are) that hardly was respected by the non feodal British society
The catholic church in Montreal and Quebec (wich was very powerful, remember, Clergy was like nobles it could possessed lands))was the main factor of immigration into Canada, for the king of France had other worries inside Europe with his aggressive neighbours, and also the nobles weren’t interested in investing in such a white and cold desert in winter.
When I read french Canadians, I have not the impression that the language is different of ours, just that their accent is a bit difficult to catch, but you could say the same thing of the Marseillais
yeah, Tabernacle, and some other expressions that are funny too
“Sorry, the Camel wasn’t even the best Sopwith, much less the best fighter- Tommy S’s Triplane and Snipe were both superior. The Camel was a treacherous beast, which killed more RAF pilots than Germans.”
Opinions are like a$$holes, everybody has one. My opinion in this case is based on Kills and Kill-ratios. The Camel shot down more German aircraft then ANY other allied fighter.
“1,294 victories—more than any other aircraft in World War I. J.M. Bruce. British Aeroplanes 1914-18. pg574.
It also had the best kill ratio, I think. It is hard to be sure about kill ratios, since as you said, poor pilots tended to die in a camel. If the engine stopped, the pilot was pretty much dead. It was tail heavy and would go into a tail spin without power. Kills were determined by counting the wrecks and it was almost impossible to tell if that wreck was there due to enemy action or an engine failure.
http://www.aviation-history.com/sopwith/camel.htm
You can argue performance, but a fighter planes function is shooting down other fighter planes. So the one that does that best IS the best fighter.
In WW2, the P-51 gets credit for being the best US Fighter. Not sure why, but it does. It had to be the 4,950 air-to-air kills. It’s loss rate was 1.2%, second only to the P-38.
It can be argued that part of the sucess of the “Hump” was how difficult it was to fly. Better pilots make for better fighter planes.
Clive Caldwell was the top Australian Ace of WW2. 28.5 kills. Most of those kills were in the P-40, which was considered a ‘dog’. Caldwell flew both Spitfires ( Mk V & VIII) and P-40′s and considered the P-40 a better fighter. His reasons were that the P40 didn’t fight against Spitfires and it’s strengths matched up well against the Bf-109f that he fought against in the desert. It had a more robust airframe, which allowed it to pull G’s that would snap the wing off a 109 (or the Spit) below 12,000 feet. It was as fast as the 109 in level flight below 12,000 feet and could out dive a rock. Plus the Warhawk had 6 .50′s which were better then either the 109 or the Spit as far as armament. So performance is over rated, it’s the men that count. The only real measure of a weapon of war is how it performs in combat against the enemy. The Sopwith Camel performed better then any other allied fighter.
Marie Claude:
If you are a French Canadian, I can understand your dislike for the Brits and the bitterness that goes with it. “Je me Souviens”. Sound familiar?
” life can only be understood by looking backwards, but that it had to be lived forward.”
Kierkegaard
No, Marie Claude. There were a lot of houses around Omaha Beach who were flying the American flag and only the American flag. But this wasn’t a private house but a public building and nither the Frebnch or European flag were on the masts.
MC,
The land in New France was all granted to and owned by Seigneurs, aristocrats; peasants had leases that gave them some property rights but by no means complete; and they had to perform feudal services, such as corvee labour. Sure a lot of English colonists had to rent land but if they owned it they owned it outright. Canadiens did not have that option. Nor were they free to trade in furs after the early days of New France because the Crown granted monopolies to companies and you had to trade with them at their price. They didn’t develop a highly commercial agriculture not simply because of climate but because of culture and law. When English Canada was developed by the losers in the American Revolution they quickly developed a commercial agriculture based on exporting wheat to England. Canada is cold half the year; but there is a lot of land and the growing season is long enough to allow for serious grain farming and hence animal husbandry.
My point is simply that despite all this, the French-Canadians developed their own culture that is in many respects a North American French culture and it was they who stuck it out in the colony when the French state left. So, because I indulge myself with quirky habits, I don’t think of French Canada in the image of the France that emerged in modern times. Remember, at the time of the Revolution, only a tiny percentage of Frenchmen actually spoke something like modern French. Regional identity ruled. But in New France a “national” synthesis of older regional identities had already been under way since the 17th century. The Quebecois national identity inherits this and it is not simply a French identity but in many respects an American one. For example, back in the 1970s, someone had the smart idea to build a car factory in Quebec to build those little Renaults called “LeCar” that were popular in France, if I remember correctly. The business was a flop. Quebecers prefer American muscle cars, at that time Camaros, TransAms, and the like.
I thought we were discussing what the naughty Americans did to the British Empire; not the French. Never mind…….
The French have a problem – they are not trusted.
I spent 40 years in the military; the last 13 involved a lot of NATO-stuff. If you think of the Cold War as a football game between NATO and the Soviet Union; the British and Americans played for NATO and the French played for France. No one trusted them.
41. John O’Neill:
Michael in England has it exactly right. When will the government of the United States withdraw its troops from England and all of Europe. WWII has been over for over sixty-five years and Americans still maintain a military presence; is it not the right thing to let the Europeans fight their own wars. As far as Iraq and Afghanistan are concerned; what is the point of establishing democracy at such a great price of blood and money for a people who have no interest in it. If the Iraqis , Afghans , and now Iranis want democracy let them do the dying and the spending. The American government has got to stop being the world’s busy body.
Jan 9, 2010 – 10:21 am
We’ll do so (withdraw)…when NATO follows it’s treaty requirements and pays more (excepting the UK which does) than 3% of the GDP on defense…to date…only the British do so. The Germans pay 3.2%, Belgians 2.8%, etc…only the countries in eastern Europe (i.e. the former Warsaw Pact) are paying the treay minimums. They only are doing so because thhey are busily replacing all their old soviet era equipment, as it’s all nogoodnik…you can buy a T-72 from the Czech Republic for about $175,000.00, a BRDM scout vehicle for about $50K…and so it goes.
What few are willing to admit in Europe is the we (the US) prevented the Soviet Union from conquering western Europe. Had we not had a continuing presence there, Uncle Joe Stalin would have rolled west in the late 40′s when the UK had less than a dozen atomic bombs, and no bomber capable of hitting Moscow…but the US did…and thus, you sir, don’t speak Russian as a second language.
41. John O’Neill:
Michael in England has it exactly right. When will the government of the United States withdraw its troops from England and all of Europe. WWII has been over for over sixty-five years and Americans still maintain a military presence; is it not the right thing to let the Europeans fight their own wars. As far as Iraq and Afghanistan are concerned; what is the point of establishing democracy at such a great price of blood and money for a people who have no interest in it. If the Iraqis , Afghans , and now Iranis want democracy let them do the dying and the spending. The American government has got to stop being the world’s busy body.
Jan 9, 2010 – 10:21 am
We’ll do so (withdraw)…when NATO follows it’s treaty requirements and pays more (excepting the UK which does) than 3% of the GDP on defense…to date…only the British do so. The Germans pay 3.2%, Belgians 2.8%, etc…only the countries in eastern Europe (i.e. the former Warsaw Pact) are paying the treay minimums. They only are doing so because thhey are busily replacing all their old soviet era equipment, as it’s all nogoodnik…you can buy a T-72 from the Czech Republic for about $175,000.00, a BRDM scout vehicle for about $50K…and so it goes.
What few are willing to admit in Europe is the we (the US) prevented the Soviet Union from conquering western Europe. Had we not had a continuing presence there, Uncle Joe Stalin would have rolled west in the late 40′s when the UK had less than a dozen atomic bombs, and no bomber capable of hitting Moscow…but the US did…and thus, you sir, don’t speak Russian as a second language.
I may have said that master computer…but you don’t show a comment by me…if this is a duplicate…my appolgies…I have problems when I try and post on this site.
To John Birther
One of the reasons Me109s fared comparatively poorly against P40s respective to against Spitfire was that German pilots had to learn the hard way that what worked against Spitfires was the best way to get killed against American fighters. For instance, diving. Since Battle of Britain it had been standard practice for German pilots to dive since they knew that due to British carburettors overflowing, Spitfires couldn’t make fast transitions from horizontal flying to dive (this was fixed later). But some German ace told taht when he first met a Wildcat he just tried that and to his surprise the Wildcat began gaining ground on him. Only poor marksmanship from the allied pilot saved his life.
About P40 armament, Spitfire Mark IX’s (basically a MkV with an upgraded engine) pilots found that her four 20mm cannons had far more punch than 50cals but several wings with different armaments were tried on the MkV and perhaps on early MkIXs before standardizing on 4 cannons.
For diving, in late war the British staged a comparative test between a Mustang, a Thunderbolt and a a Spitfire that the Spitfire won with ease. However this was a Griffon engined Spitfire and the test was about how close each plane could get to Mach 1 more than about “combat dives”.
Well from my own research it also seems to me that the rise of America was the main downfall of the British Empire. Just like the rise of China would result in the downfall of America (and the civilized free world in my opinion). And yes, American leaders and intellectuals did sit around and plot the demise of Western imperialism. They thought it was evil and such opinions were common even in late 1800s America. Despite common accusations thrown at us from Anti-American types, we’re very anti-imperialism. In fact we made one of the most dramatic changes in the development of human civilization with our founding support for both the League of Nations and the United Nations. Before the rise of America as the most economically prosperous and powerful country in the history of mankind, all of human civilization revolved around empire building. Which is why the Europeans and the British were not evil in my opinion for having such expansive empires. They were simply a product of the time period in which they existed. Afterall, they were simply conquering other empires. So their “crime” was being better at it than the other peoples of the world. European empires and especially the British Empire were very civilized compared to all other previous empires. They left behind a vast infrastucture of education, rule of law, economic theory and a common global language which benefitted those conquered people tremendously. They were certainly more civilized than their conquered foes would have been had the tables been reversed. In fact, former British colonies are almost always better off than their neighbors. Something which most Americans would deny out of pride but is obviously true. We simply imrpoved upon the British model but our roots are still undeniably British. The rise of America and global American leadership, especially after WWII, made imperialism as taboo as racism. Something which we never get credit for but is one of our most significant accomplishments. But I think it’s somewhat debateable if that was a good thing or not. Maybe we should act like an empire again, specifically the British Empire, in order to improve the backwards 3rd world and international stability and security.
Michael in England : If I was an American I would look out at the world and conclude that there are only four countries I could depend on – UK, Canada, Australia & New Zealand. As an Englishman I come to the same conclusion.
I don’t know if you’ve ever read Steven Den Beste’s blog USS Clueless (sadly he no longer blogs on politics, but it’s still worth a read). He once came to roughly the same conclusion. As an Aussie I was proud of that then and still am now.
There are a few more colonies worthy of mention – India as you mentioned, when the British arrived it was in a state of constant war between small principalities. After you left it was a nation. They may have stalled for a while by going down the socialist path, but they’ve recovered well and are heading for First World status at a rapid rate.
Malaysia and Singapore – both have their problems but are reasonable democracies (for a given value of ‘reasonable’) and economically stable. Wouldn’t have been that way unless British, Indian, NZ, and Australian troops hadn’t faced down the attempted communist takeover in the 1950s and won. Unlike the French in Indochina I might add – yes, yes, different circumstances I know.
When the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami hit SE Asia, the first on help on the scene in Indonesia, within a couple of days, was:
Aust and NZ : Combat engineers, helicopters, naval support vessels, C-130 cargo aircraft to transport bulk food etc
United States : Aircraft carrier and Marine Expeditionary Unit, i.e. dozens of helicopters, massive desalination capacity to produce fresh water, troops and engineers to restore services.
India : Naval support vessels and helicopters
(There were lots of others eventually, but these were the first in)
Note the nations. India is particularly impressive because they were hit pretty hard themselves, but still had the resources to help other countries. Helicopters were the most valuable help because of the damage to roads and water supplies, for days the priority was ferrying huge amounts of water to people who had been cut off. The UN didn’t manage to even get their advance officials in to set up offices till two or three weeks later – if we had waited for them thousands more would have died.
Marie Claude – Mike in England I am amused by your self congratulation, but wasn’t Sierra Leone, zimbabwe, Southern Africa, Nigeria, Yemen, Palestine, Irak, Iran to a cerain level), Afghanistan… not Brits colonies, I don’t see that they were and or are true democraties
Marie, Africa is Africa – you show me one southern African former colony of any European empire that has prospered since independence. In fact, Michael’s point applies very well to Zimbabwe – it was one of the most prosperous nations in Africa at independence. It’s hardly the UK’s fault that Mugabe has stuffed it up.
Same goes for much of the Middle East. As for Palestine, doesn’t Israel count? They seem to have done ok.
Afghanistan was never really a colony, although the UK controlled a lot of territory and had a lot of influence in the 19th century it was more of a military buffer zone.
The fact remains that the British did far more to economically and politically develop their colonies than any other European nation, and their former colonies have a far better track record. There are five former British colonies in the OECD – and only one (Mexico) from any of the former Spanish, Portugeuse, French, Belgian, or German empires.
Also don’t forget that our actions in WWII set the tone for how modern human civilization should be conducted. Rather than using our vast military presence in your countries and our absolute economic dominance (America alone controlled a whopping 50% of global GDP at the end of WWII) to swallow you up and make you a part of our empire, instead we left soldiers where they were needed to ensure long term stability in former enemy nations and poured tons of cash into your reconstruction process. Not only that but we largely let you govern your own affairs how you saw fit. Compare that to the Soviets for example who “liberated” Eastern Europe by enslaving everyone who fell under their military boot. America doesn’t get anywhere enough credit for how we ended the age of imperialism and how generous we were and still are. Hell, we’re still providing you spoiled leftist socialists with free security even though you openly insult us on a constant basis and give us very little in return.
I think the hevay cost of men in WWI and the cost of WWII along with the British economy doing very badly aftewards were the biggest factors more than anything else. There may be some validity in what she says, but there were other extentuating reasons and circumstances as well. That being said, thank God for the the Brits and their commonwealth! Better allies, we have never had or ever could have.
JFM I thought of american cemetaries that are american properties
Though, I’m not surprised that the inhabitants had an american flag, tourism oblige : their life earning is mainly american tourists
like in some other channel coast part they are Canadians (north of Dieppe,a massacre in 1942)
Even the former German commandants that used to defend places come too.
My Hubby used to manage a hotel in Dieppe, our custommers were parisians in week end (horrible) english, american, canadian german former soldiers or their families, and movies teams.
Once we had that sort of cinema technical and actors team.
see what I narred about there
http://mysoupis.blogspot.com/2007/05/professionnal-anecdotes-in-fawlty.html
Amorsolo, I’m not canadian, but I got family relations in Canada
J “B” S:
I think we’re on the same, page here, just quibbling over defining the vague term “best.” The Bf.109 accounted for more kills than any other German machine- but was it “better” than the Me.262?
I do recall reading an article on the Camel which relates some of the figures etc. you give, but also quoted from a postwar RAF assessment of aircraft design and what were considered desirable fighter characteristics- I can’t lay my hands on the thing now, but the authors’ view was to the effect that the Camel’s tricky handling contributed not just to accidental crashes, but also to the awful death rate among green pilots at the hands of the Germans, since all but the most confident/skilled tended to fly the Hump tentatively and avoid hard maneuvering.
This I suppose isn’t unlike the longbow vs. arquebus argument- the longbow was a much more effective weapon than any firearm prior to [insert date here], but only in the hands of an archer trained up practically from childhood. Any peasant could be quickly taught to load and shoot a matchlock, and that’s what prevailed.
Boy, we’ve gone off-topic.
Want to talk capital ships?
Ah yup, we are waaaaay off the reservation. I think we should blame Marie. Since everything gets blamed on President Bush, blaming Marie would give him a break. Marie seems to be a good egg so she might not whine too much.
I would like to see armored ships return to the fleet. Modern air delivered weapons are top attack, for the most part. You can sink an unarmored ship by blowin holes in the superstructure and cracking the hull, but that doesn’t work with an armored ship. Most of the ships sank by air attack in WW2 were done in by torpedo. You have to make a hole in the side and let the water in. Skip bombing was the best way to do that, since torpedeos tend to break up when they hit the water at over 100MPH.
Not sure any navy has air delivered weapons that could sink a Missouri class. Considering how many VLS cells one could fit on a BB, it’s almost scary thinking of it. Keep a turret with 16″ guns and you have fire support from an almost invulnerable platform that would own everything within 500 miles. Crew size would be a problem.
Michel
“I spent 40 years in the military; the last 13 involved a lot of NATO-stuff. If you think of the Cold War as a football game between NATO and the Soviet Union; the British and Americans played for NATO and the French played for France. No one trusted them.”
We had good reasons not to trust Anglo-Saxons imperialism, that still is aiming to recover Plantagenets’ lands, and to anhilate our nation,
I feel sorry, for you, that you can’t handle your own country anymore, I’m sure that no French, nor a Sarkozy would let you invest our businesses instead of, cuz your only interest is making money on people perspiring
Michael
again, about Nato, that’s why a french general was chosen lately at the head of nato operations for Europe LMAO (sorry, he was Americans’ favorite)
Ltw
Same goes for much of the Middle East. As for Palestine, doesn’t Israel count?
you couldn’t have chosen a worst exemple
Israel developped because of Israelians that fought the Brits after WW2
Southern africa, became a wealthy colony because of its numerous “white” population, idem for zimbabwe, and … idem for any of our colonies when still “white” population was administrating them
truepeers
someone had the smart idea to build a car factory in Quebec to build those little Renaults called “LeCar” that were popular in France, if I remember correctly. The business was a flop. Quebecers prefer American muscle cars, at that time Camaros, TransAms, and the like.
in french canadian, “lecar” is “le Char”
Again about my hubby, he was a canadian emigrant in the late seventies, and french expats had some of the french renault model like “dauphine”, if you knew that this car had its engine at the back, then it you know that that it isn’t convenient for driving on icy roads.
I saw a small movie where my hubby and his comrads were making fun with their “dauphine” on a frozen pond.
So it why, heavier american cars were preferred at the end
about the french language evolution in Quebec and in France, you’re right, most of the france languages were provincial dialects, it’s only when school and military conscription become obligatory that the french lanquage as it is now began to be spoken. (even in the trenches, soldiers had hard time to understand each others)
Now the official language was transmitted by the administration and the church
Ah Marie Claude, what a dreamer you are! If only Albion was as perfidious as you imagine!
If only the provinces of France that had allegiance to the English crown had kept to their allegiance. Just imagine the Acquitanian divisions of the English army repulsing the German hordes in 1940. Instead of surrendering to the Boche. (see previous note on old French farmer, that is what he called them)
(for those whose history is hazy, more of France held allegiance to the English crown in the 14th century than did to the French king)
Michael, I’m laughing, because you’re still living on legend that shakespeare wrote for boosting his queen proudness
if you’d still been in Aquitania, you wouldn’t have bothered to fight the Germans at all, remember Chamberlain in Munich, when Daladier whas summing up the agreement by “ah les cons, s’ils savaient…”
and you were very quick to leave the battle field in 1940
(for those whose history is hazy, more of France held allegiance to the English crown in the 14th century than did to the French king)
of course french king only owned “ile de France”, but as far french allegiance to english kingdom, I am dubitative
uh sorry it wasn’t late seventies ment, but late sixties
“and you were very quick to leave the battle field in 1940″
Should we have stayed and joined you in the POW camps? Or got away to fight another day?
Should we have stayed and joined you in the POW camps? Or got away to fight another day?
if you’d been doing that, then Germany would would have been really invaded before the official alliees invasion, and nowadays some german kids would have had a Brit grand daddy too, like quite a few have a french one, cuz lots of french prisonners were sent to work into german farms to replace men
I believe that during WW2, it was standing policy of the Roosevelt administration
to make policy that would hinder maintaining the Empire. It was felt that with the
British gone, the new American superpower would move into the vacume. Many military
plans were made to avoid protecting British interests. Italy was invaded instead of
the Balkins, where pro-allied forces were quite well developed in Greece and Serbia
because it was seen as a move the would aid Britain post war. There was howeve no
longstanding anti-empire plot prior to WW2.
It is also fact that asst. sec. nav Franklin D. Roosevelt was dsmissed as beneath
notice by one Winston s. Churchill after WW1. FDR never forgave nor forgot!
“again, about Nato, that’s why a french general was chosen lately at the head of nato operations for Europe LMAO (sorry, he was Americans’ favorite)”
Riiiiight. Never mind that De Gaulle pulled France out of the military wing of NATO (and expelled US forces) in 1966… and only now, 20 years after the defunction of the USSR and any real threat, is Sarko finally creeping back into the Alliance.
Bohemond
but french troops were in all Nato missions though.
De Gaulle stepped out becuz he was complaining that the rewarding positions were always alloted to the Anglo-saxonnery, thus he moved out, only of the Nato bureaucracy !
Sarkozy’s move to Nato bureaucrcy was because a Nato Europe “bureaucracy” was decided, and that will mean in term that Nato will become the EU army so dear to the former french presidents
Getting back to Ms Gould’s original point – did the US bring down the British Empire?
The answer is yes and no. The Empire was destroyed by fighting two World Wars but its destruction was pushed along by Roosevelt and company. They saw no reason why they should support the British Empire. And indeed, why should they have?
Which brings me back to my original plan for my country – no American wars and no French wars for us. And no aid from America because the lesson of the past is that we can’t afford it.
Marie Claude
At the end of the Hundred Years War, Bordeaux raised againt the French and expelled them of the city. but England immersed in the Two Roses War was unable to send andy help and the city was conquered again. Aquitanians didn’t want to be French.
JFM, of course, because Bordeaux made its main revenues in selling wine to England.
michael,
They saw no reason why they should support the British Empire. And indeed, why should they have?
-Well, in hindsight, we can see that the US has not been particularly attuned to how to bring order to the global system. It might have been an idea to allow the Brits to help keep world order a little longer, if they could have carried some of the cost.
MC,
if you knew that this car had its engine at the back, then it you know that that it isn’t convenient for driving on icy roads.
-yes, makes sense, but so too the heavier cars; in the 70s i think a lot of quebecers would have had heavier cars but with engines in the back. The first time I drove a car in Quebec was in winter in Montreal with the streets full of ice and snow and some guy gave me his keys to his American sports car to run an errand. I couldn’t control the damned thing.
Why did American’s fund the I.R.A ? You all must of hated us so much to want to blow us up.
We thought it came from ignorance and romanticism,so i am interested to know what the rationale was.
However Northen Ireland was different,it was about the U.S support of terrorism against British and Irish citizens.
It’s the method used to change sovereignty not the concept.Political change through peaceful means.
Even Bush said that there is no difference between the terrorists and those countries that support them or turn a blind eye.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army_arms_importation
John Major refused to talk to Bill Clinton when,against our request,issued visa’s to Gerry Adams and pals to fund raise without pre-condition’s.
This legitimized them,which encouraged funding.
The U.S also gave political status to wanted and escaped I.R.A terrorists and refused extradition’s
One who escaped prison for murder had a street in New York named after him.
Gerry Adams received awards as well.
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/29/nyregion/at-city-hall-an-ira-leader-gets-a-warm-reception.html
The U.K even stopped passing sensitive intelligence to the White House because it often seemed to find its way to the I.R.A.
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/19/world/us-leaked-british-intelligence-to-ira-ex-envoy-says.html?pagewanted=1
Peter King was and is one of their biggest cheerleaders.
http://kingwatch.blogspot.com/2008/06/king-gets-hypocritical-on-illegal-irish.html
There are commonwealth countries who want to remain associated with the British
http://www.cyec.org.uk/young-commonwealth/commonwealth-countries
We don’t get why this is and the British people have no interest in maintaining an empire.
When the Falklands was invaded the feeling here was, where the hell are the Falklands and why is it ours?
Because of this the Queen has had to visit the countries in the commonwealth and sit through countless bare-arsed topless traditional dances which are amusing to look at.
Did America bring down the British empire?
No. Whoever thought it did?
Next question …
The Brits, of course. Do try and keep up.
Did America bring down the British Empire? No but there were Americans working to do so. The Author’s Hostess is right about the actions just not where those actions originated. There has never been an American President who got control of the American State department. As Will Roger put it, America had “never lost a war or won a conference.” The department has been indifferent to American interests and openly hostile to British interests as far back as can be documented. Similarly, the mirror has been true of the British Foreign office.
I do not know if it is that young traitors are selected by studying for the diplomatic Corps or if something in the lesson plans results in actions against the interests of countries but it does happen.
Did America bring down the British Empire? No, the British did. They did it by losing the respect of their subjects. they did it by surrendering at Singapore against a force a third their own. They did it by being handled their as.. by Rommel who had only a small number of Germans. They did it by being unable during teh whole war to use their 94AA guns as antitanks despite seeing how effective the german 88 was and losing many men, suffering stunning defeats by lack of an effective AT. They did it throght their stupidity, stubiornnes, routine, lack of imagination and intellectual dearth.
Once they lost the respct of their subjects, every subject nation wanted to pull apart and the British Empire could only crumble.
uh JFM, to me it looks like you described “surrender Monkeys”
truepeers
I think that the metal made the difference, european design cars were not treated for salted roads (or it was too thin), and cars got rotten quicker than american’s made. Well at least I heard that was one of the reasons.
Naturally that the american’s were more in the line of the “american dream”.
RKV (#40), I think you’re right. Those who think the British Empire was the worst thing that ever existed obviously don’t know much about how the Soviets or Japanese treated their subjects. As Orwell noted, Gandhi owed his success to the fact that it was the Brits he opposed – in Nazi-ruled Europe or Stalin’s USSR, he would have vanished without a trace.
The Empire was at its zenith at the time of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. After the carnage and ruinous expense of WWI, Brits began to lose their taste for Empire. The Depression certainly didn’t help and WWII definately finished things. Suez was basically the coffin in the nail. FDR was certainly no fan of the British Empire, but it would have disappeared even if he had supported it. The Brits couldn’t afford it and had lost their imperial zeal.
As for weird French slang: a French woman I once knew who visited Cajun country told me she was taken aback when she heard an old Cajun affectionately call his little granddaughter “catin.” It’s an innocent term in Louisiana, Cajuns use it as a term of endearment. A Cajun could get into trouble in France saying that!
Few (in America, at least) pay much attention to WWI, but it truly was the disaster that set the stage for all the other disasters, terrible “isms” , and mass murders and follies of the 20th century. So much that has gone wrong since then can be traced back to the watershed years of 1914-18.
Way OT, but since France has been talked about as much in this thread as Britain, here’s a laugh for you:
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has lashed out at France over resorting to violence in dealing with protesters in the country, describing it as violation of human rights.
Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman-Parast deplored the Sarkozy government’s arrest of nearly 400 people across France on New Year’s Eve.
Mehman-Parast called on Paris to identify the source of unrest in the country. “Instead of attacking people, the French government should identify the origins of the recent unrest.”
Nice of those mullahs to be so concerned about “human rights violations,” isn’t it?
#143 Avitar:
“I do not know if it is that young traitors are selected by studying for the diplomatic Corps or if something in the lesson plans results in actions against the interests of countries but it does happen.”
No, it’s a feature of the fact that every other department of the Senior Executive Service of the Federal bureaucracy has a domestic interest upon whose knob they can slobber to get the cushy post-Civil Service featherbed gig.
State’s outside “Mack Daddies” are all foreigners…aside from the Oil Patch,(and Amoco doesn’t need all that many Farsi speakers anyways…unless they ALSO know how and where to drill for oil).
If you claw your way into the SES at Agriculture or Commerce or Labor, you have powerful private-sector “rabbis” who reward your unbiased and fair-minded administrative decisions,(nudge-nudge, wink-wink).
Foggy Bottom Brahmins have foreign devils…Saudis and Chinese and Eurotrash.
‘Splains a lot about our foreign policy, doesn’t it?
ww1 and ww2 is wat ended the empire let’s face it most of you wood not be there if it was not for us and because ww1 ww2 we could not afford it. for the world to be a better place we new the age of the empire hat to come to a end to mike way for the modern world we no to day
ps ps you can thank Hitler for end of the empire and the new age of technology
hitler was a good example of why empires had to end to give way for the free world.
There is a period in Britain’s history which can be blamed, and it is clearly World War 2. During and after. During World War 2 new definitions in the Empire are made with remarks that are made to the Dominions and certain so-called colonies would not necessarily have to follow British foreign policy, and can follow their own policies. This maybe due to India before or during the War, rejecting pre war Dominion type status in which she would still follow foreign policy and certain ultimate powers were retained in London.
The British Empire expanded between the World Wars. One of the areas that formally became part of the Empire, Rhodesia was told it was free to legislate what it liked before this was said to other parts of the Empire around the same time. Most of the Empire was free to do as it wished. But if I was Canada, why would I want to get involved in WW2. Canada knew certain powers and tools remained and she had no choice. South Africa being a soft example of being forced into war. Personally, if I was Canadian, Rhodesia, or SA Prime Minister etc, I would of declared complete sovereignty. It being legal is another matter.
The Royal Navy (not including any other Empire navies RIN, RAN etc) was not overtaken by the US navy until 1943. Again, WW2 is to blame. New initiatives that would of pushed British shipbuilding from 34%-37% to 50% did not fully become effective because of war. Our warship building program was ruined. Our 18 Battleship building program and 11 fleet carrier program were messed up because for Britain, if there had to be war, it too early for us. We had the biggest Battleship building capacity in the world, yet due to merchant losses, these yards had to accommodate these losses. Due to war demands, Britain could not concentrate on getting as many of the smaller closed yards back into operation as needed. Strikes because of owners making a lot of money did not help nor did arguments between Admirals over Carriers and Battleships causing delays, and general war problems like bombing’s, and priority changes. By that time there was a manpower problem.
In the 30s, Britain built a large number of factories, many were the classic saw toothed roofed building’s with art deco faces which are nowadays no longer efficient, with these and heavy industry re-building, Britain was not in bad shape. We spent more on defense in this period than anyone else, and depression was no where near as bad for us. The US would of probably remained in depression for another 10 to 15 years if it were not for WW2. Where WW2 made the US a major power with the Soviet Union, it destroyed Britain. But it seems to me that Britain’s decline gets brought forward earlier and earlier 1965, 1950s, 1945, 1914, 1890s, 1870s, at the moment Britain’s fall is around the time of Trafalgar.
So really, World War 2 and everything that goes with it, is the biggest single issue. Roosevelt saying he will milk the British cow for all it is worth, and his Egyptian relations, Canadian relations help to undermine the Empire, the Atlantic Charter etc etc, are just a result of this conflict and opportunities it gives.
It’s our debts from US to India, and first full majority socialist Government in 1945 that helped Britain not recover. She still hasn’t.
Incidentally by rights, shouldn’t the US of had more of the pan handle because of tribes in the area. Was this more to do with Canada wanting a slice of land they had no strong argument for and it all ended in a compromise which did not help anyone?
I thought after the Paulet affair that Britain had upheld Hawaii’s identity as a Country, and never really did any informal imperial dominating stuff there.
So no, America is not to blame. If there are any Countries, it’s Germany (Europe in general. Europeans with some British dummies have helped undermine Britain, British industry recently too, proper industry we need) and Japan. We also had a few silly people back then, but now where near as we have today.
I’m not bitter though. I am over the credit crunch which is just as much our fault (with our silly service industries), as America’s, but that is being blamed on the US too.
The thing is, is not America an Empire itself, that was formed by classic Empire building? At least, in that respect you could say that Britain had it’s old Kingdoms united into a Country by ambitious Scottish monarchs. Although most people do not realize it’s Britain, not Scotland, England, Wales etc that is the Country. So Empires and free worlds are not all that different. hitler was just a nut case and has nothing to do with good Empires. It was Empires be it British and American that stopped hitler.
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