stephenluscombe

British writers about the British Empire
Paul and Penny Julian Symons Paul Scott: A Life by Hilary Spurling Hutchinson, 429 pp, £16.99, October 1990, ISBN 0 09 173984 5 Paul Scott’s Raj by Robin Moore Heinemann, 246 pp, £18.50, October 1990, ISBN 0 434 47588 2 One day in 1950 I walked down…

Comment by stephenluscombe March 9 permalink
British writers about the British Empire
The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling by David Gilmour Murray, 351 pp, £22.50, March 2002, ISBN 0 7195 5539 6 Kipling is an easy man to dislike. He wasn’t much loved in his own time, apparently, even by people – schoolmates, for…

Comment by stephenluscombe March 8 permalink
Spam
The Spammers seem to be attacking this site again. Can they please back off!!!

Comment by stephenluscombe March 7 permalink
British American war Plan Red
Actually, most New Englanders were against the war of 1812, it was actually the Jeffersonian expansionist wing of the party which was all for war. Jefferson was very much a Francophile and believed that she would be victorious. He encouraged Madison…

Comment by stephenluscombe February 12 permalink
British American war Plan Red
I think that the Americans were primarily 'contingency planning' and were just thinking of 'possible' threats rather than 'real ones. Although it would only have been a century earlier that the Americans conducted their disa…

Comment by stephenluscombe February 12 permalink
Great Site!
Thanks very much. During the American Revolution about a third of the population of the 13 colonies supported the Patriots, about a third stayed loyal to the Crown and the other third tried to stay out of it and neutral. Of course many - but by no m…

Comment by stephenluscombe February 1 permalink
Loss of the opium trade.
Certainly the Opium Trade was an enormously important trade within the British Empire. Britain had even gone to war with China in order to continue its 'right' to trade opium with them. In general it was grown in India and shipped off to C…

Comment by stephenluscombe February 1 permalink
Malaya 1957
I've bought a copy for my kindle - I'm afraid I have quite a few items on my reading list but hope to get to it relatively soon! It doesn't help that friends and family keep giving me books to read:-) on top of all my historical readi…

Comment by stephenluscombe January 11 permalink
destruction of the royal navy
Too true, I was always surprised how much credit Thatcher received given that Knox had only just announced a savaging of the Royal Navy shortly before the invasion. In many ways I have more time for Callaghan's quiet use of military might by or…

Comment by stephenluscombe December 2012 permalink
British Empire expansion between 1680 and 1763
Have you had a look at the timeline on: http://www.britishempire.co.uk/timeline/timeline.htm Which has a century by century break down. Given the dates of your question I would focus on three main areas: Financial Innovations which allowed Britain t…

Comment by stephenluscombe December 2012 permalink
destruction of the royal navy
The shame of it is that Argentina used to be regarded as one of the pearls of South America and one that was a major destination for European settlers - up there with South Africa, Australia, USA and Canada. Things really started to go wrong in the …

Comment by stephenluscombe December 2012 permalink
fall of Rangoon
In theory, I would say that it is possible that it could have turned the tide. However, landing a division in a hostile battle zone with lack of air superiority and roaming Japanese naval vessels and submarines would've been tricky. It is not j…

Comment by stephenluscombe December 2012 permalink
destruction of the royal navy
I think they are extremely jealous of the quantity of oil that the Brazilians have discovered off shore. Those are huge deposits. So far, the deposits off the Falkland Islands have been OK, but not on the scale of Brazil's finds. Still, a damag…

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
destruction of the royal navy
Argentina is becoming quite the 'rogue' state these days. It is being found to have cooked its books and lied about the state of its economy to all the major economic organisations, it has a highly 'populist' tradition where they…

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
destruction of the royal navy
Although the French have as many isolated island communities for which they are responsible to defend - very similar to the Falklands in many ways. The profiles of Britain and France in geopolitical terms is surprisingly similar

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
destruction of the royal navy
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/TrainingAndAdventure/RoyalMarinesFaceFrenchCounterpartsInExerciseCorsicanLion.htm An interesting article on Royal Marines working with the French

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
America,s destruction of the Empire
Well, the only time England tried this was during the 1650s with the rule of the Major-Generals and it didn't really go down too well! I still go for Churchill's dictum that Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the oth…

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
America,s destruction of the Empire
It does make a difference if you are going into an area as liberators or as occupiers!

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
detruction of uk armed forces
Mugabe would probably have loved to play the role of anti-neo-imperialists. Britain did intervene quite successfully in Sierra Leone - but that was on the coast and easy to get to. Zimbabwe is inland. I understand that it was the South Africans who …

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
America,s destruction of the Empire
You can see the problems of not sending in troops in Israel today. Despite pummelling Hamas in Gaza from the air and by sea, Hamas are still claiming that they are successfully 'resisting' the Israelis and hence have not been defeated. But…

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
America,s destruction of the Empire
But to win a war, you do need boots on the ground - even if they are effectively mercenary boots. You can't win a war just with ships, just like you can't win one just with planes. Ultimately, soldiers are needed on the ground to occupy, c…

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
America,s destruction of the Empire
This policy tended to work outside of Europe but was less successful when applied against European powers. Europe was too rich and powerful to blockade successfully (although it didn't stop the Royal Navy from trying). Britain generally had to …

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
America,s destruction of the Empire
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/britain-is-now-most-powerful-nation-on-earth-8326452.html People forget that much of Britain's power even in the heyday of Empire was soft power - based around legal systems, contract law, languag…

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
America,s destruction of the Empire
Britain felt that it had to invest in its own atomic weapons programme. This in itself was because Britain felt that it had been let down by America. The agreement with Roosevelt was that the British would concentrate its scientific research on rada…

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
America,s destruction of the Empire
I'd say that you are both right! Roosevelt was certainly more anglophile than many of his advisers and immediate successors and did bend over backward to help Britain - short of entering the war. But he did insist that Britain remove all of its…

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
America,s destruction of the Empire
There is absolutely nothing wrong with being hostile to empires! It is just that the Americans were a bit on the hypocritical side for a number of reasons. Firstly, they had their own Empire - they called it manifest destiny but it was just a contin…

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
british commonwealth
Ireland is peculiarly associated to the British Empire. I suppose England's first involvement with Ireland was before the British Empire came about at the time of the Normans. This was at the request of Irish, so many appear as an actual invasi…

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
America,s destruction of the Empire
I certainly agree that America was very hostile to the British Empire for long periods of time, however, I also think that in the post-war Cold War period it came to re-evaluate the European Empires in general. They had encouraged decolonisation unt…

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
detruction of uk armed forces
It is interesting that the Rohingya are being picked on now ( the Muslims to the West of Burma) These were loyal to the British in WW2 whilst the buddhists of Burma tended to side with the Japanese. Aung San Suu Kyi's father actively cooperated…

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink
destruction of the royal navy
They are also attaching the 'Royal' prefixes

Comment by stephenluscombe November 2012 permalink

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British Empire Discussion

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