> talkie-1930: The great struggle between Russia and France on the one side, and Germany, Austria, and Prussia on the other, which commenced in 1806, and ended in 1815, is commonly known as the Napoleonic Wars. In the former year Napoleon I. was defeated at Austerlitz, and in the latter year at Waterloo. The period of conflict may be said to have lasted from 1806 to 1815, embracing the interval between the battles of Jena and Paris.
> India was the land which economically justified a lot (but not all) of the whole imperial undertaking.
The Empire was a moneylosing operation for Britain.
I suspect it's not so much that losing India caused the Empire to go down, but that a general (relative) decline in Britain expressed itself via the loss of India and the other declines you see.
It was profitable in a mercantilist world in which one must establish an empire ruled by force in order to obtain free trade. The British Empire had the largest free trade zone and made the most money as a result.
After the Great Depression was aggravated by tariffs like Smoot-Hawley, the United States decided this wasn't sustainable.
After World War 2, the United States was in a position to dictate the global economic system. At Bretton Woods they instituted a system of voluntary free trade.
Now that Britain had voluntary free trade agreements with the rest of Europe, there was no reason to keep British India. Even if France or the United States conquered it, they would still export raw materials to the UK and import manufactured goods.
This was true for the rest of the empire as well.
Meanwhile the costs of maintaining the empire skyrocketed. The military was depleted from WW2. It was easier to grant independence than to rebuild the military.
It's a narrow and poorly supported view that it truly was money-losing.
Such claims systematically ignore the $45 trillion (current value) extraction from India, and treat the counterfactual of Britain with no Empire incoherently. The captive markets the Empire forced mattered enormously and are too often obfuscated now. Certainly a big part of Empire was about transfering wealth to the elites, so the layperson, or perhaps "Britain" as the state alone if that is your meaning, did not see as much of a direct monetary benefit as they might have.
I guess this is not meant as a general introduction, but it would have been useful to acknowledge the differences between different legal systems somewhere at the start?
(Even if it's only to argue that they aren't all that different in practice.)
Weirdly enough, Honecker was unrepentant until his death. They didn't put him on trial in the unified Germany, because the law in Germany is intentionally soft towards the terminally ill.
that's just a myth, there even is a black book on them (in German). one of the many examples is the Magnate Conspiracy, from WP: "Petar Zrinski and Fran Krsto Frankopan (Francesco Cristoforo Frangipani) were ordered to the Emperor's Court. The note said that, as they had ceased their rebellion and had repented soon enough, they would be given mercy from the Emperor if they would plead for it. They were arrested the moment they arrived in Vienna, and put on trial. They were held in Wiener Neustadt and beheaded on April 30, 1671."
> If no AI was in use for its creation process, I do so wholeheartedly hope, then every single folder features ideas/message in quite genius attitudes, I believe, and the whole work deserves a physical frame!
And if AI was used, that would decrease your enjoyment?
You might be better off never looking too deeply into how the sausage is made.
I don't think anyone talked about the 'Great Depression' in 1930.
Instead, what we know call the 'Long Depression https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Depression was often called the 'Great Depression' before that one took over the name.
Also keep in mind that the Great Depression was mostly a US thing. Many other countries had less incompetent policy in that time.
reply