British Empire?

Question

How could the UK being only 245,000 km² in size and consisting of approx 35 million people come to command an Empire about 36.6 million km² (14.2 million square miles), about a quarter of Earth's total land area, consisting of about 458 million people, approximately one-quarter of the world's population.

Answer 1

Actually a good question since they were up against the French, Spanish, and Portuguese at the time, and the Portuguese had one heck of a head start.

They were pretty industrious though, and the crown let the merchants keep most of the money they made. The entrepreneur class has a lot to do with that type of project. The Spanish seemed to fund everything from the Royal Treasury, and demanded pretty much everything back in return. The British monarchy issued charters, and while they took their cut in taxes, you got to keep most of the profits (if any) from your investments.

I visited Jamestown VA this year, and what struck me is that the Europeans really didn't have anything the natives didn't have with the exception of body armor. Lets face it, a flintlock black power gun has no range, no aiming capability, and takes forever to reload. If they didn't have that body armor the indians would have slaughtered them.

Anyway, that would be my guess. It is an interesting period of history to learn about.

-Dio

Answer 2

It was an English mechanic (John Harrison) who solved the problem of longitude that plagued navigation in the 1700s and therefore made maritime navigation far safer for British explorers, as opposed to the risks faced by the other nations with colonial leanings. The colonies were then built upon an intrepid (and often cruel, imperial, and horribly ignorant - think slavery) spirit that at its best concentrated on infrastructure and (to some extent) democracy and constitutionalism. I wouldn't under estimate the reach of the Spanish though, there are 400 million Spanish speakers and this is rapidly on the increase. The fact that there are more English speakers is at least partially attributable to American popular culture so we can't completely claim that on the basis of colonialism.

Answer 3

The British Empire was basically built on trade not violence.
Men like Cecil Rhodes and Raffles created great trading companies and with that the wealth the foundation of Empire was laid then developed by a massive fleet of merchant ships.
At one time the British merchant navy was the largest ever seen in the world and one company alone the Ellerman Line (the largest at the time ) had more than 400 ships.
The answer - TRADE.

Answer 4

sure. The British performed a great volume with a constrained inhabitants and a small u . s . to operate from. Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada, South Africa, u . s . - all democratic international places that are rather non violent, with respected criminal platforms. research that with different international places of the international and the Empire comes out searching extremely useful.

Answer 5

And dont forget that Britain ran an entire Empire with a few hundred people.
Now we have near a million bureaucrats just 'trying' to run the UK.

Answer 6

Gun Boat Diplomacy,Bribery and Trickery,Protection Scandals.[There were roughly 680 Maharajahs in scattered princely states in British India who were under their protection same was the case in middle East after the first world war.In Africa it was pure Brutality and apartheid.Only China was not captured[Although they tried with Opium Wars] rest you know how it was.But it is worth noting that despite about 200 years of RAJ the ordinary working class or lower classes never had a sigh of relief.It was only after the British Empire was finished that they gained some things.

Answer 7

Interesting question and I'm sure you'll get much more informed answers from other people than me, but I'll give it ago.
Most of the different groups of people around the world weren't as technically as advanced in weapons as modern European countries. Compare a spear against a rifle or cannon no competition full stop......
Then there was a powerful Navy in which to transport our troops around the world to occupy areas previously uninhabited or occupy and defeat the locals such as the Aborigines(?) who were more of a prehistoric culture (no offence intended).
Most of the time troops from European countries are usually well trained and reasonably well led in time. of battle.

Answer 8

Britains position in Northern Europe provided it with excellent resources. Its military forces became very sophisticated and well equipped.
For one thing, when fighting European wars, it was much easier for Britain to invade Europe than vice versa. This allowed this island nation to consolidate resources, and gain military experience without significant change or destruction to its mainland. It also, by virtue of being an island, became the worlds largest naval power-this was useful for both military conquest and trade routes.
Britains world conquests were a mixture of military superiority-eg the defeat of numerically superior Zulu warriors, armed with spears, by British troops armed with modern rifles, political savvy and luck. And lets not forget extensive use of slavery-if you brutalise people enough, because you believe them to be inferior to your own countrymen, they become remarkably passive.

Answer 9

And don't forget, these days the army dress in camoflage and have all sorts of fancy weaponry but back then our boys turned up in bright red coats with muskets, huzzah! And we had a fairly good Navy to enable the armies to get where they were going.

Answer 10

Two words: navy, redcoats.

Basically the redcoats could fire a constant stream of bullets at the enemy, and the navy was the most advanced navy in the world at the time.