Of course we could also point to a very important day 250 years ago come Saturday.
Despite the lost of American colonies, the empire kept growing until WWII.
WWII devastation created vulnerability, which combined with rise of nationalism in colonies, communist influences and overall world feelings against colonialism caused the collapse.
But Suez canal crisis has been the obvious start of collapse.
The end of the British empire statutes with the American Revolution. King George grossly underestimated the will of former colonists who didn’t want to live under tyranny. WWI was the next phase where a whole generation was lost in that conflagration, followed by WWII, then India.
The end of the British empire started with the American Revolution. King George grossly underestimated the will of former colonists who didn’t want to live under tyranny. WWI was the next phase where a whole generation was lost in that conflagration, followed by WWII, then India.
Yeah, the Brits went bankrupt long before 1956.
About 1942, somewhere in there maybe. That’s what “Lend Lease” and all that was about. FDR sent 50 overage obsolete destroyers in exchange for leasing bases and overseas possessions and such. Legislation, “neutrality” act, policy, public opinion, Americans wanted no part of yet another European civil war like the “Great” war twenty years earlier. Our “experts” like to ‘splain how this was all horribly short sighted, but it was perfectly sensible and understandable at the time. Not to mention, had Wilson not gotten America involved in the first place, there may not have been a World War 2.0
Wilson campaigned the 1916 presidential election on “He Kept Us Out Of War”; won a very narrow victory in just a few swing states, (sound familiar?) took office in March. U.S.A. in the war by April. Hm.