Chris congratulations, The 2024 Election article was referenced and quoted as well as linked on the Avoidable Contact stack, there by exposing your writing to an additional 3,000 subscribers… the more the the better….
Are you sure you mean 25 years, for the measurement from 1914? That's only 1939, at which point the British Empire was still pretty stonking. It would be another 20-25 years before it shrunk back to the rump of a few island holdings here and there that mostly perist to this day.
You are correct that the Empire didn't finish disolving for another decade or so. But I respectfully disagree that the British Empire was still pretty stonking in 1939. Before World War I starts the British Empire rules the seven seas, and few would dare challenge the mighty battleships of the Royal Navy. Then the British lost 880,000 men in World War I; 6 percent of their male population. World War II in Europe starts in September 1939 with the German conquest of Poland. By May 1940 the British have been driven off the Continent and only saved worse disaster with the Miracle at Dunkirk, while at sea British shipping was suffering heavy losses to German U-Boats during the Battle of the Atlantic.
The dissolution of the Empire seems inevitable to me after that. Though I have long thought that in many ways the Brits lost their taste for Empire and the peerage as they endured the Blitz while learning about the Happy Valley shennanigans from the 1941 trial of Sir Henry John Delves Broughton, 11th Baronet, for the murder of Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll, after Broughton learned Hay was sleeping with Lady Diana Broughton. Broughton was acquited, largely because Hay was sleeping with pretty much the entire female population of Happy Valley; there were simply too many viable suspects. The murder remains unsolved. There's a terrific movie about this named White Mischief.
Chris congratulations, The 2024 Election article was referenced and quoted as well as linked on the Avoidable Contact stack, there by exposing your writing to an additional 3,000 subscribers… the more the the better….
Are you sure you mean 25 years, for the measurement from 1914? That's only 1939, at which point the British Empire was still pretty stonking. It would be another 20-25 years before it shrunk back to the rump of a few island holdings here and there that mostly perist to this day.
You are correct that the Empire didn't finish disolving for another decade or so. But I respectfully disagree that the British Empire was still pretty stonking in 1939. Before World War I starts the British Empire rules the seven seas, and few would dare challenge the mighty battleships of the Royal Navy. Then the British lost 880,000 men in World War I; 6 percent of their male population. World War II in Europe starts in September 1939 with the German conquest of Poland. By May 1940 the British have been driven off the Continent and only saved worse disaster with the Miracle at Dunkirk, while at sea British shipping was suffering heavy losses to German U-Boats during the Battle of the Atlantic.
The dissolution of the Empire seems inevitable to me after that. Though I have long thought that in many ways the Brits lost their taste for Empire and the peerage as they endured the Blitz while learning about the Happy Valley shennanigans from the 1941 trial of Sir Henry John Delves Broughton, 11th Baronet, for the murder of Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll, after Broughton learned Hay was sleeping with Lady Diana Broughton. Broughton was acquited, largely because Hay was sleeping with pretty much the entire female population of Happy Valley; there were simply too many viable suspects. The murder remains unsolved. There's a terrific movie about this named White Mischief.