If by 'England' you mean the UK, then yes, of course we've lost big battles, and a fair few of them at that! In terms of wars, we've overtly 'lost' fewer, because UK policy has been,. wherever possible, to fight wars in alliance with a combination of other nations. Historically, the UK was primarily a sea-power, with a relatively small population prior to the 19th Century. British foreign and defence policy usually sought to confront direct threats to British interests by forming coalitions of friendly - or at least like-minded - powers, whose military power on land would supplement British maritime and economic strengths. One of the few times this didn;t work was during the American War of Independence (1775-1783), when the UK was faced after 1778 by a loose coalition consisting of the American Colonies, supported by France, Spain and Holland. The UK lost that war mainly because, after 1778, the Franco-Spanish naval threat to the UK's West Indian Colonies was deemed a more urgent threat than the rebellion of the American Colonies. The rebellion of those Colonies was an established political fact by 1776, and after 1778, it seemed more sensible for the UK's limited available military and naval forces to be used defending the revenue-producing islands of the West Indies. Ultimately, the British Armies in North America weren't reinforced to the point where they could effectively deal with the American colonists, so Britian lost those Colonies. However, the naval battle of the Saints in 1780 successfully preserved Britain's West Indian colonies against Franco-Spanish attack.
That was the only war we've completely 'lost', and even then, it was only lost in the sense of ceding independence to the American colonies. In the wider Imperial perspective, the more passive and commercially-valuable territories had been defended against an outside threat.
Aside from that, the UK hasn't really 'lost' (in the military sense) any conflicts since then, although we were diplomatically on the wrong side in the 1864 Schleswig-Holstein dispute. Knowledge that the diplomatic view throughout Europe was opposed to the British view, prevented the British Government becoming militarily involved in the Schleswig-Holstein question.
Although the UK emerged from both World Wars on the winning side (ie, as a member of the victorious Allied coalition), they were both pyrrhic victories, particularly in the economic sense. In 1914, the UK was the world's largest creditor nation. In 1919, it was the world's largest debtor nation. In 1939, the UK still preserved the appearance (although not the reality) of a global, imperial power. By 1945, the UK was bankrupt and beginning to contemplate the retreat from Empire.
You could say that the series of defeats sustained in South East Asia between December 1941 and May 1942 (the loss of Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, Brunei, Borneo and Burma) demonstrated decisively that the white races were NOT the invincible masters they had appeared to be, and paved the way for the demands for independence from the UK's colonies in South East Asia and elsewhere. If you regard the retreat from an Imperial position as a 'defeat' in the longer term (which I don't), then you could regard the Second World War as one in which the UK was ultimately a 'loser'.
There was also the Suez debacle of 1956, in which the UK and France achieved their military objectives in Egypt, only to find that world opinion was against them, and they were forced to withdraw.
As to a list of battles the UK has lost, this could be endless, but a list starting from 1700 would include the following major engagements: Almanza 1707, Fontenoy 1745, Lauffeldt 1747, Hastenbeck, 1758, Trenton 1777, Saratoga 1777, Yorktown 1781, Retreat from Kabul 1841-42, Chillianwallah 1848, Isandlhwana 1879, Maiwand 1880, Majuba Hill 1881, Khartoum 1885, Stormberg, Magersfontein, Colenso, Laing's Nek and Elandslaagte 1899, Spion Kop 1900, Aubers Ridge, Festubert and Loos, 1915, the Gallipoli campaign 1915-16, Ctesiphon 1915, the siege and fall of Kut-el-Amara, 1916, the first day of the battle of the Somme 1st July 1916, the second phase of the Battle of Cambrai, 1917, the second battle of the Somme, March-April 1918, the Norwegian campaign, 1940, the France and Flanders campaign, 1940, Greece and Crete, 1941, the South-East Asia campaign of 1941-42, the Gazala battle, 1942, the assault on Cos and Leros, 1943, Arnhem 1944, and Suez 1956. Not an exhaustive list, but probably enough to be getting on with!
A list of the battles/campaigns the UK has won would be far longer.
2007-06-18 00:22:57
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answer #3
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answered by JimHist 2
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