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Fareed Zakaria with his Had Spain or Germany become the world’s leading power, things would look very different today. forgets that spain WAS the leading power from the 1500s until the 1700s and prior to that Germany or to be more precise Germania was the leading power in the form of the Holy Roman Empire (and Spain was linked to that for a time)

The UK is what made the English dominant -- once they had dominated the Scots by converting them to Protestantism (earlier to this the Scots always allied themselves with the French against the English), they didn't have to face enemies on land

They were under the tutelage of the Dutch until the early 1700s and then in the early 1700s they defeated the Dutch in the third anglo-dutch war, they united with the Scots 1707 and Spain declined as a result of its wars with Louis XIV.

the English were the real ones to benefit from Napoleon's wars -- as the other european powers concentrated on land battles while the English were bloackaded so had to move far afield

They were also benefited by the collapse of the Moghuls after Aurangzeb in 1701 and their replacement by the Maratha confederation -- a squabbling mass of rajahs