4 ms·

Generally war is a net zero endeavour, sure. I'm not sure if WW2 necessarily 'broke' English power? They were in decline before they, as the US is in decline no

Generally war is a net zero endeavour, sure. I'm not sure if WW2 necessarily 'broke' English power? They were in decline before they, as the US is in decline now. War or no, the outcomes seem to be the same?

roenxi 3y ago
Everyone everywhere is always in decline. Including the groups that go from strength to strength. The Byzantine Empire was in decline for more than a millennium. The UK came out of WWII looking at the bleak ruins of a country. It was quite a bit worse than net-zero, they lost a lot of real wealth. To the point where India immediately discovered it had enough power to go their own way (a net win for the world at large, but still the proximate cause was the collapse of British strength leading to an implosion of the empire). The lesson here is when you have a good thing going, provoking a big war will cause change and the good thing will go elsewhere. Keynes warned them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_t...
skissane 3y ago
When Alexander the Great conquered Persia, he encouraged his generals to marry wives from Persian aristocratic families. He also conquered a small part of northern India (now part of Pakistan); no doubt if he had conquered more of it he would have extended the same policy to India. Can you imagine the British in their rule of India ever encouraging the sons and daughters of their leading families to court the children of the leading families of India? Which I think was part of why the British Empire failed - many ancient empires, conqueror and conquered mingled to the point that people forgot who was which. The British viewed themselves as superior and apart from their conquests, which prevented their conquests from coming to identify as “British”, in same way as many peoples conquered by ancient Rome came to see themselves as “Roman”. In the end, there was nothing to hold the Empire together.
- neovialogistics 3y ago
  This is ignoring the extensive efforts of the USA in the 40s-70s to empower Britain's colonies and enable their self-determination. The British Empire did not exist in a vacuum.
  - skissane 3y ago
    I don’t think I was “ignoring” anything - I pointed out one causal factor, you point out another. All these historical events have multiple causes, and my suggestion and yours aren’t mutually exclusive.
  - csomar 3y ago
    I agree with this too. Britain (or the ruler of the common wealth) draw lots of its power from its colonies (especially middle-east oil producing colonies). Britain lost the war, and the US forced its hands out of these colonies. I think, if the British were say Chinese or Japanese, the US would have probably cut it directly out of existence. But what happened was an overall "peaceful" transition of power from Britain to the US. It was also gradual as the British still have/had influence lately (ie: HSBC) but the decline has more to do with the US taking "their" place than the British failing to modernize.
    - skissane 3y ago
      > Britain lost the war, and the US forced its hands out of these colonies. > the decline has more to do with the US taking "their" place than the British failing to modernize. Rather than the US replacing the UK as colonial power, the US pushed for the colonies to become independent - at which point many of them moved out of US control - such as by trying to play the Americans and Soviets off against each other through the Non-Aligned Movement > I think, if the British were say Chinese or Japanese, the US would have probably cut it directly out of existence. I wonder if the US really would have forced China to give up its control over Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols (in Inner Mongolia), Manchus, among others. Even though you can argue that China didn’t “lose” as such, I’m not sure the US would have treated them much differently if they had “lost” in the way the UK did (as an ally which had won a Pyrrhic victory)
- pseudo0 3y ago
  And how well did that work out for Alexander? His empire was fracturing before his body was cold, with his generals collaborating with existing local power structures to carve out their own fiefdoms. I don't think it's really possible to fairly compare the situations given the vast differences in technology, logistics, communication, etc, but you picked a rather poor case study to make your point.
  - skissane 3y ago
    It didn’t work out well for Alexander’s own empire, but the Hellenistic kingdoms it spawned survived for much longer - the Seleucid Empire endured for almost 250 years. And Rome, as I mentioned, was closer to Alexander in this regard than to the British. Twice, Rome even had a Syrian Arab as its Emperor (first Elagabalus and then Philip)-can you imagine the British Empire ever being ruled by someone from the colonies?
    - telotortium 3y ago
      The UK is now being ruled by someone from the colonies. Granted, Elagabalus became emperor during a time when the empire was past its peak but before entering real decline. The UK didn't get Sunak until at least its Crisis of the Third Century, if not later - post-Theodosius, after which the Roman Empire was permanently split into East and West. I hope we don't see a Sack of London soon at this rate.
      - skissane 3y ago
        Sunak didn’t come to power until 70 years after the British Empire had already officially been declared to be over, and ~50 years after the time by which the vast majority of its colonies had already been let go. If his great grandfather had been UK PM a century earlier, it would have been a very different history. An Indian as UK PM in the 1920s could well have killed off the Indian independence movement - it would have made British claims that “every subject of the Empire is equal” far more believable. The contemporary UK is not the Empire - it is like early mediaeval Rome, the Empire gone for good (at least in the West) but a lot of impressive buildings still standing, many more than today
- revelio 3y ago
  > The British viewed themselves as superior and apart from their conquests, which prevented their conquests from coming to identify as “British” Not really no. The British ran the empire with famously small numbers of actual Brits on the ground, using armies mostly raised from local populations and training up the local civil service from local recruits. And that legacy lives in. The current Prime Minister of the UK is now Indian, his counterpart in Scotland is Pakistani, and the British are one of the least racist countries in the world: https://www.uk-values.org/news-comment/uk-public-among-most-trusting-of-their-neighbours-internationally-and-increasingly-comfortable-living-next-to-historically-marginalised-groups https://www.uk-values.org/news-comment/uk-public-among-most-... ... caused partly by the huge number of people who immigrated from former colonies and now identify as British (and who are accepted as such).
  - skissane 3y ago
    > The British ran the empire with famously small numbers of actual Brits on the ground, using armies mostly raised from local populations and training up the local civil service from local recruits. That was in the colonies – they didn't encourage immigration from the colonies (especially the non-settler ones) to the metropole. And when that started happening in large numbers anyway, they introduced the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 – which denied UK citizens the right to enter and remain in the metropolitan UK unless they or their ancestors had been born there, or they were exempted as "desirable" (professionals). At the time, that Act was widely condemned as racist legislation, and it is hard to see how it was compatible with Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. > And that legacy lives in. The current Prime Minister of the UK is now Indian, his counterpart in Scotland is Pakistani, and the British are one of the least racist countries in the world: There has been a massive change in UK attitudes on this topic since the 1960s. A big driver for that was Labour's victory in the 1964 election – while the Tories passed racist legislation such as that 1962 Act, Labour responded with anti-racist legislation such as the Race Relations Act 1965. They didn't repeal the 1962 Act however (despite having condemned it as racist while in opposition), indeed they strengthened it with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 and the Immigration Act 1971. But, all that's irrelevant to the history of the Empire, since the Empire was officially dead by then, and unofficially either dead or pretty close thereto. At the height of the Empire, the UK was a lot more racist than it is today. It wasn't as racist as the US or South Africa–but that's not saying much. The UK of the 2020s has no problem with a Prime Minister of Indian descent – do you really think the UK of the 1920s would have had no problem with that?
polotics 3y ago
War has been a net negative the world over for all time. Please find me an example of net zero!

roenxi 3y ago

Everyone everywhere is always in decline. Including the groups that go from strength to strength. The Byzantine Empire was in decline for more than a millennium. The UK came out of WWII looking at the bleak ruins of a country. It was quite a bit worse than net-zero, they lost a lot of real wealth. To the point where India immediately discovered it had enough power to go their own way (a net win for the world at large, but still the proximate cause was the collapse of British strength leading to an implosion of the empire). The lesson here is when you have a good thing going, provoking a big war will cause change and the good thing will go elsewhere. Keynes warned them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_the_Peace https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Economic_Consequences_of_t...

skissane 3y ago

When Alexander the Great conquered Persia, he encouraged his generals to marry wives from Persian aristocratic families. He also conquered a small part of northern India (now part of Pakistan); no doubt if he had conquered more of it he would have extended the same policy to India. Can you imagine the British in their rule of India ever encouraging the sons and daughters of their leading families to court the children of the leading families of India? Which I think was part of why the British Empire failed - many ancient empires, conqueror and conquered mingled to the point that people forgot who was which. The British viewed themselves as superior and apart from their conquests, which prevented their conquests from coming to identify as “British”, in same way as many peoples conquered by ancient Rome came to see themselves as “Roman”. In the end, there was nothing to hold the Empire together.

neovialogistics 3y ago
This is ignoring the extensive efforts of the USA in the 40s-70s to empower Britain's colonies and enable their self-determination. The British Empire did not exist in a vacuum.
- skissane 3y ago
  I don’t think I was “ignoring” anything - I pointed out one causal factor, you point out another. All these historical events have multiple causes, and my suggestion and yours aren’t mutually exclusive.
- csomar 3y ago
  I agree with this too. Britain (or the ruler of the common wealth) draw lots of its power from its colonies (especially middle-east oil producing colonies). Britain lost the war, and the US forced its hands out of these colonies. I think, if the British were say Chinese or Japanese, the US would have probably cut it directly out of existence. But what happened was an overall "peaceful" transition of power from Britain to the US. It was also gradual as the British still have/had influence lately (ie: HSBC) but the decline has more to do with the US taking "their" place than the British failing to modernize.
  - skissane 3y ago
    > Britain lost the war, and the US forced its hands out of these colonies. > the decline has more to do with the US taking "their" place than the British failing to modernize. Rather than the US replacing the UK as colonial power, the US pushed for the colonies to become independent - at which point many of them moved out of US control - such as by trying to play the Americans and Soviets off against each other through the Non-Aligned Movement > I think, if the British were say Chinese or Japanese, the US would have probably cut it directly out of existence. I wonder if the US really would have forced China to give up its control over Tibetans, Uyghurs, Mongols (in Inner Mongolia), Manchus, among others. Even though you can argue that China didn’t “lose” as such, I’m not sure the US would have treated them much differently if they had “lost” in the way the UK did (as an ally which had won a Pyrrhic victory)
pseudo0 3y ago
And how well did that work out for Alexander? His empire was fracturing before his body was cold, with his generals collaborating with existing local power structures to carve out their own fiefdoms. I don't think it's really possible to fairly compare the situations given the vast differences in technology, logistics, communication, etc, but you picked a rather poor case study to make your point.
- skissane 3y ago
  It didn’t work out well for Alexander’s own empire, but the Hellenistic kingdoms it spawned survived for much longer - the Seleucid Empire endured for almost 250 years. And Rome, as I mentioned, was closer to Alexander in this regard than to the British. Twice, Rome even had a Syrian Arab as its Emperor (first Elagabalus and then Philip)-can you imagine the British Empire ever being ruled by someone from the colonies?
  - telotortium 3y ago
    The UK is now being ruled by someone from the colonies. Granted, Elagabalus became emperor during a time when the empire was past its peak but before entering real decline. The UK didn't get Sunak until at least its Crisis of the Third Century, if not later - post-Theodosius, after which the Roman Empire was permanently split into East and West. I hope we don't see a Sack of London soon at this rate.
    - skissane 3y ago
      Sunak didn’t come to power until 70 years after the British Empire had already officially been declared to be over, and ~50 years after the time by which the vast majority of its colonies had already been let go. If his great grandfather had been UK PM a century earlier, it would have been a very different history. An Indian as UK PM in the 1920s could well have killed off the Indian independence movement - it would have made British claims that “every subject of the Empire is equal” far more believable. The contemporary UK is not the Empire - it is like early mediaeval Rome, the Empire gone for good (at least in the West) but a lot of impressive buildings still standing, many more than today
revelio 3y ago
> The British viewed themselves as superior and apart from their conquests, which prevented their conquests from coming to identify as “British” Not really no. The British ran the empire with famously small numbers of actual Brits on the ground, using armies mostly raised from local populations and training up the local civil service from local recruits. And that legacy lives in. The current Prime Minister of the UK is now Indian, his counterpart in Scotland is Pakistani, and the British are one of the least racist countries in the world: https://www.uk-values.org/news-comment/uk-public-among-most-trusting-of-their-neighbours-internationally-and-increasingly-comfortable-living-next-to-historically-marginalised-groups https://www.uk-values.org/news-comment/uk-public-among-most-... ... caused partly by the huge number of people who immigrated from former colonies and now identify as British (and who are accepted as such).
- skissane 3y ago
  > The British ran the empire with famously small numbers of actual Brits on the ground, using armies mostly raised from local populations and training up the local civil service from local recruits. That was in the colonies – they didn't encourage immigration from the colonies (especially the non-settler ones) to the metropole. And when that started happening in large numbers anyway, they introduced the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 – which denied UK citizens the right to enter and remain in the metropolitan UK unless they or their ancestors had been born there, or they were exempted as "desirable" (professionals). At the time, that Act was widely condemned as racist legislation, and it is hard to see how it was compatible with Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. > And that legacy lives in. The current Prime Minister of the UK is now Indian, his counterpart in Scotland is Pakistani, and the British are one of the least racist countries in the world: There has been a massive change in UK attitudes on this topic since the 1960s. A big driver for that was Labour's victory in the 1964 election – while the Tories passed racist legislation such as that 1962 Act, Labour responded with anti-racist legislation such as the Race Relations Act 1965. They didn't repeal the 1962 Act however (despite having condemned it as racist while in opposition), indeed they strengthened it with the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 and the Immigration Act 1971. But, all that's irrelevant to the history of the Empire, since the Empire was officially dead by then, and unofficially either dead or pretty close thereto. At the height of the Empire, the UK was a lot more racist than it is today. It wasn't as racist as the US or South Africa–but that's not saying much. The UK of the 2020s has no problem with a Prime Minister of Indian descent – do you really think the UK of the 1920s would have had no problem with that?

polotics 3y ago

War has been a net negative the world over for all time. Please find me an example of net zero!