brenton said:
Whoa-- not anywhere close to "half the world." It was at most 1/4 of the world even during the British Empire's peak and a much lower fraction in terms of population-- much of the empire was vast landmasses like Canada that are sparsely populated. My apologies for a long post here, but I've been studying this topic (world empires) now for over 15 years in detail, and for reasons I'll explain, the best ranking for the British Empire is about #6-- behind China and the Islamic Empire founded by Muhammad and Umar Ibn al-Khattab (#1 and #2 by far), then the Roman Empire at #3 (not quite the same territorial extent but durability and legacy almost unparalleled), then the Spanish Empire #4 (see below), then Alexander the Great's Macedonian Empire (enormous in size and population but more importantly, tremendously influential in legacy-- modern world religions, the Hellenistic legacy, language patterns, even timekeeping-- spread of the 60-second minute and 60-minute hour-- and mathematical systems, trade, coins all stem from Alexander) at #5, then finally the British at #6. The British could have been #3 if they'd stayed out of WWI (a couple other counterfactuals offered up), but they ruined themselves economically with that war and lost far too many men and funds, not to mention their imperial hold on Asia.
Most importantly, is that Britain's Empire was 1. very short-lived compared to most other big empires like the Roman Empire or even the Spanish Empire from the late 1400's. Britain really didn't have much of an overseas empire (outside of Ireland, which had some colonization stretching all the way back to Henry II in the mid-1100's) until after the French and Indian War, i.e. the Seven Years' War, after 1763. The World Wars, post-WWII colonial wars and nationalist movements destroyed the British Empire after 1945, which gives it less than 200 years. Paltry compared to Rome or Spain who had similarly large empires (especially Spain, which in total landmass and proportional population was actually a bit larger at its peak in the early 1620's), and pathetic compared to the bona fide juggernauts like China and the old Arab Islamic Empire, which have encompassed an enormous land mass and continue to the present, in China's case in a very clear political form.
1763 was the key year for the British. after the French got knocked out. That was when Britain was finally able to establish itself in India, Australia, even North America (which prior to that was predominantly in Spanish and French hands). England's overseas empire may have started with a tiny foothold on Newfoundland when Henry VII sent John Cabot there to begin a fishing settlement in 1497, but after that it was glacial-- James I and John Smith got Jamestown going in 1607, and then it was 1763 before much further expansion took place.
As for the fall of the Empire-- Britain suffered a disastrous blow to its empire after World War I, which essentially drained the UK of two centuries' worth of treasure, and for reasons I still can't remotely fathom, the British officership decided to send 1 million of the country's best, brightest and most dedicated citizens to be mowed down by German machine guns at the Somme and Ypres in WWI-- in a war that was mainly a Continental affair and where Britain really had almost nothing to gain and everything to lose. WWII of course caused multiple other hits-- the Blitz, the Narvik disaster, and especially the catastrophe in Singapore at the hands of the Japanese in 1942 inflicting a mortal wound. (Again, a bit ironic since Britain wasn't a priority Axis target-- Russia and China were the chief targets of the Nazis and Tojo's regime, respectively.) Britain was then defeated in some small colonial wars after WWII-- the British were actually humiliated in Indonesia in 1945, which they were occupying in the hopes of re-establishing their and Dutch supremacy (which would maintain the trade networks that British Malaya relied upon), and in fact a British WWII hero-- General Mallaby-- was killed in the Indonesian war, while whole British columns were annihilated at Surabaya and British Indian soldiers defected to the Indonesian insurgency. The Brits were frustrated in Vietnam when Gen. Gracey inserted his troops in 1945-46 there, then also defeated in Burma, where the Burmese patriots had ousted the Japanese and obtained a good deal of Japanese weaponry, thus armed to the teeth against the British forces. These wars further drained Britain and helped to split India from British rule by 1947-1948, and it was also in 1948 that the British were defeated and kicked out of Palestine, following the Irgun attacks. This is really the date of the British Empire's decline, just as Dienbienphu in 1954 marks it for the French-- there were later British defeats and disasters (e.g. the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, Suez in 1956, Aden in the 1960's) but it was really by 1948, with the loss of Southeast Asia, India, Burma *and* Palestine following the defeats at the hands of nationalist forces and the bankruptcy and damage from the World Wars, that the British Empire collapsed.
So, you have 1763-1948 for the British Empire-- not all that much compared to Rome, with less land but much longer durability, less than Spain which had more land *and* more durability (and quite a cultural legacy), and nowhere in the same league as China and the ancient Arab Empires, with both a tremendous amount of land area and durability, and an unparalleled cultural legacy.
2. On that cultural legacy point-- by far the largest English-speaking country in the world today is the United States of America, but ironically, the vast majority of what's now the US was never in the British Empire. The US wasn't like Latin America, all of which was under the Spanish crown (or Portuguese, in the case of Brazil). The vast majority, over 80% of current US territory was French (Louisiana Purchase) or Spanish (Southwest and Florida), or Russian (Alaska), never British, and acquired by the US after the American Revolution and during a period when the US was a direct competitor , culturally and economically, against the British. The other British settler colonies now countries-- Canada (which is both English and French in origin), Australia, and New Zealand-- collectively number about 50 million people.
Outside of that, British influence pales compared to that of e.g. the Romans, who imprinted themselves powerfully on three continents for almost half a millennium, or the Spaniards, and again nowhere near that of the modern East Asian Empires or the Arab empires. The British certainly had an impact on India, which was really their core colonial possession, but even there it's often vastly overstated. In terms of most-spoken languages-- and this is despite the fact that Indians are so networked with outsourcing from the US-- English is nowhere even close to the top, it's about #15 or so. It's one of about 20 official languages (the national language is Hindi, though not much spoken in the south), but spoken really only by a small elite-- other indigenous languages such as Hindi, Tamil, Marathi, Telugu and Bengali have a far greater presence on the Subcontinent, which is why e.g. Bollywood movies are in Hindi (alongside the flourishing Bengali and Tamil film industries) and not in English. Now, even the courts and ministries, and high-tech industries (which now means computers), which had indeed leaned toward English at 1948, are instead dominated by languages like Hindi, Tamil or Bengali due to sheer force of economic advantage. (Even Rupert Murdoch's lucrative media businesses in India are Hindi-based, not English.) This is in part because the Brits never had that strong a demographic presence in India, compared to e.g. Spain in Central America. Much of India's civil law indeed derives from English roots, but most of India's legal and administrative system stems from more ancient sources-- e.g. the native Gupta Dynasty and the Mughals. The British certainly built some infrastructure like railroads, but not all that much (what was built was chiefly for the British elite and therefore adjusted for that population's small size), and India's great cultural and architectural landmarks like the Taj Mahal are all pre-British in origin. India's chief religions, of course, are Hinduism, Sikhism and Islam-- all pre-British. Furthermore, people's names in India are almost never of British origin (except for the pseudonyms used by a few people in call centers
; practically everybody in India has a name of Hindu or Muslim origin.Contrast this with e.g. Latin America. These countries were ruled for 3-4 centuries by Spain and/or Portugal, compared to about two for India. (Much of India's south, BTW was French-ruled, not British.) Spanish and Portuguese predominate here, Spanish Catholicism is by far the dominant religion, Spanish law dominates the courts and statutes, Spanish or Portuguese surnames are used generally by the people, Spanish administrative divisions still delineate the countries, old Spanish customs are still fundamentally in observance, even direct descendants of old Spanish coins are used. (India uses the native rupee, while even the United States uses the dollar, which is descended from the native Joachimstaler used in the old German and Austro-Hungarian states.) Even in the Philippines, where Spanish never replaced the native Tagalog, Spanish surnames, religion, even vocabulary (roughly 20% of Tagalog) define the culture while old Spanish law sits alongside American legal traditions in the courts of that nation. Thus, India-- which was the jewel in Britain's crown-- shows nowhere near the level of cultural influence or legacy that Spain and Portugal's American colonies show, and other British colonies show even less: Iraq, Malaysia, and Yemen for example have very little to show for their brief period of British colonization, with the Arab/Muslim influence predominating by far.
If you're in the business of writing counterfactuals, I think the British could have had a much more durable, lasting and influential world empire with a legacy more like the Romans or the Spanish (though not in the league of the Islamic empires or China), but the British ruined themselves by joining WWI. If the British just stay out of that bloodbath and avoid bleeding themselves dry along with France, then basically the Continental players pummel each for a while, Britain occupies the high ground as a sort of mediator (and maybe uses its naval power to take some extra colonies in Africa or from the Ottomans, like in the French and Indian War), probably Kaiser Wilhelm II gets to make his point as a military leader and have an independent Poland as a buffer in the east (though nothing in the way of territorial gains-- the Kaiser wasn't interested in a Napoleonic sweep, more in just beating up on France and Russia to keep them at bay in 1914), and Britain emerges as by far the most powerful European player, untouched by the Great War and free of the festering rage and revenge roiling the Continent. Furthermore, in this scenario-- there's probably no Soviet Union (which came about from WWI) to spread its anti-colonial ideology and cause the British misery in places like Indonesia, Vietnam, Burma and Egypt down the road! Most importantly, Britain stays rich and maintains its valuable resources (especially it's best and brightest citizens) to maintain a hold on its overseas empire.
Outside of not joining WWI, the British could have had a much more durable empire by (1) not losing the American colonies in 1783 (that was obviously a nasty turn for them), (2) defeating Liniers and the Buenos Aires fighters in 1806-1807, thereby gaining control and Anglicizing much of South America (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_invasions_of_the_Río_de_la_Plata for more on that-- the British invaded Buenos Aires and nearly conquered it but were defeated twice), which would have been a tremendous gain for the British and established them on the critical South American landmass, or (3) not being utterly annihilated in Afghanistan by the Ghilzai warriors in the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1842 and in two other Afghan Wars. Had the British prevailed in Afghanistan, it would have been the British-- not the Russians-- who would have gained control of the strategic and resource-rich Central Asian trade routes and landmasses, and even more importantly, the British would have had a Western base to pry away Chinese control of the Silk Road (China then reeling from the Opium Wars) and move to break up China from land as well as by sea. Remember, China was never colonized, though it suffered very unfavorable trade terms from the Opium Wars, and British defeat in the Afghan mountains was a factor in thwarting them.
I've been studying this subject now for about a decade and a half, and in figuring out the most powerful empire in history-- with power defined not just by landmass or population alone but mainly by durability, presence (i.e., the extent to which a colonizing power makes its presence, culture, customs and so on felt in the colonized region) and influence and legacy-- the British Empire really isn't in the Top Five, it's probably fairest to rank it #6. With any of those counterfactuals-- and especially the British just staying out of World War I (with WWII probably not occurring at all, at least not in the horrific form it eventually did), the British would be #3. But the British catastrophe in WWI basically blew their big chance for that.
#1 would be China, which was founded by Qin Shi Huangdi in 221 B.C. and has now transformed itself into a nation that basically retains the same administrative divisions, urban plans and roads, standard character system (modified in the 1950's), bureaucratic principles, even coinage that were introduced in 221 B.C., over an enormous landmass with 1.4 billion people, a superpower before and probably soon to be one again. You just can't beat that.
#2 is the Arab/Islamic Empire founded by Mohammed and Umar Ibn al-Khattab in the 7th century. The Arabs were a minor tribe in what's now southern Arabia at the time, basically considered a backward people, maybe decent traders but otherwise didn't register anywhere on the radar screen. By the mid-8th century, the Arab/Islamic Empire stretched from the Atlantic all the way to India, with a cultural, religious and linguistic legacy that's still fundamental today.
#3 is the Roman Empire-- probably needs little explanation, stretched over three Continents and lasted for about half a millennium from the founding by Augustus Caesar, at the core of the culture, languages, laws and even physical appearance of Europe, less influential in Africa and Asia but still important there, responsible for Roman form of Christianity becoming the main religion in Europe, even old Roman roads, aqueducts, bridges still in use, a testament to their engineering prowess.
#4 is Spain-- reasons discussed above, enormous territory and population, durability, powerful cultural legacy even among large populations not Spanish themselves (compare India for example).
#5 is Alexander the Great's Macedonian Empire-- as a political unit it was quickly carved up by its generals, but as a cultural unit its importance is hard to estimate. It was because of Alexander that Judea (and the early Christian lands) came into the Greco-Roman, and thus Western, sphere-- which enabled Christianity to diffuse into the Roman Empire and thus into Europe, when it otherwise would have been unknown on that Continent, an obscure Western Asian creed. The Hellenistic period and that enormous cultural influx from the Greco-Persian fusion, which defined much of Classical Europe and a chunk of Persia, came out of his conquests. Spread of Greek koine as a lingua franca in general (crucial later for the European Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution, among other things). Alexander conquered Babylon and thereby spread the Babylonian numerical system eastward, which was the first to use the zero as a number (later went back west to Europe from India and the Arab lands), and which used the bizarre sexagesimal system (the 60-second minute and 60-minute hour). Alexander was also the major explorer of the period and opened an enormous number of trade routes, with his coinage and many names of cities (e.g., Kandahar, Alexandria in Egypt) stemming from his movements throughout that territory. He was also unique for his day in not slaughtering the conquered people and instead, encouraging a degree of rapport among the Greeks/Macedonians and Persians-- again, crucial for the cultural cross-currents that followed.
Britain comes after this-- indeed very important, but nowhere near the most powerful. Had Britain just avoided the bloodbath of 1914, I suspect we'd still have a big and quite powerful British Empire today, but they made a fatal mistake for their imperial ambitions by joining that and being basically bled dry and utterly bankrupted by the German legions in that bloody conflict.