What enabled the British Empire to really dominate the Age of Colonialism?

[Blue3]

What enabled the British Empire to really dominate the Age of Colonialism?

The UK might have been late to the game, but other powers like Spain really flamed-out early, and the Dutch and even French never really reached the levels of the Brits. If any of the European colonial powers came out as a clear "winner" amongst all the others, it was definitely the British Empire. Why? If you say because they had the best navy - why, and was that really the only factor? Anything in particular about their geography/resources, political system, economic system, etc that enabled it to thrive from late 1600s  / early 1700s up until the mid-20th century?

[lfromnj]

Lets look at the other major players in the age of Colonialism.
Almost all of them had a reset during the Napoleonic wars where they lost most of their territories or sold them . Britain with its Navy managed to stay out of the fray and come out on top

Political stability also helps . Britain didn't have a civil war past 1650 and its transition to a constitutional monarchy in 1689 was peaceful . Rather than the rapid swings between liberalism and reactionaries Britain kept a steady and slow trend of liberalism and avoided years such as 1848 .
France- already infamous
Spain- The war of the Spanish Succession along with the Trieno Liberal from 1820 to 1823 when Spain gave up on many of its colonies.
Other countries like Italy/Germany weren't unified.
Arguably the other great dominator of the Age of Colonialism is actually Russia, It kept all its colonies it gained in the 18th century all the way up to 1991. However Russia was all land based and almost the opposite of Britain in everyway which is interesting.

[PSOL]

The Russian Tsardom cannot be compared to the Soviet Union, but otherwise Lfromnj is right. Might I add that a significant amount of emigres from France and Germany and persistent land wars there made financial capital flock to the safest and most secure for illiquid assets, London either in gold in the bank or property.

[Pres Mike]

Lets look at the other major players in the age of Colonialism.
Almost all of them had a reset during the Napoleonic wars where they lost most of their territories or sold them . Britain with its Navy managed to stay out of the fray and come out on top

Political stability also helps . Britain didn't have a civil war past 1650 and its transition to a constitutional monarchy in 1689 was peaceful . Rather than the rapid swings between liberalism and reactionaries Britain kept a steady and slow trend of liberalism and avoided years such as 1848 .
France- already infamous
Spain- The war of the Spanish Succession along with the Trieno Liberal from 1820 to 1823 when Spain gave up on many of its colonies.
Other countries like Italy/Germany weren't unified.
Arguably the other great dominator of the Age of Colonialism is actually Russia, It kept all its colonies it gained in the 18th century all the way up to 1991. However Russia was all land based and almost the opposite of Britain in everyway which is interesting.

Saying Russia was a colonist power is like saying the US was a colonist power with Manifest Destiny. Both are technically true but not in the same way as British/French/Spanish/Dutch colonies

Russia and the US were trying to expand their nation states and turn their natives into "Russians/Americans". Hence the expansion being mostly land based.

No one considered Kenya to be an extension of Great Britain. It was a colony of Great Britain.

[darklordoftech]

Lets look at the other major players in the age of Colonialism.
Almost all of them had a reset during the Napoleonic wars where they lost most of their territories or sold them . Britain with its Navy managed to stay out of the fray and come out on top

That makes me wonder what the world would be like today if the Napoleonic Wars didn’t happen.

[lfromnj]

Lets look at the other major players in the age of Colonialism.
Almost all of them had a reset during the Napoleonic wars where they lost most of their territories or sold them . Britain with its Navy managed to stay out of the fray and come out on top

Political stability also helps . Britain didn't have a civil war past 1650 and its transition to a constitutional monarchy in 1689 was peaceful . Rather than the rapid swings between liberalism and reactionaries Britain kept a steady and slow trend of liberalism and avoided years such as 1848 .
France- already infamous
Spain- The war of the Spanish Succession along with the Trieno Liberal from 1820 to 1823 when Spain gave up on many of its colonies.
Other countries like Italy/Germany weren't unified.
Arguably the other great dominator of the Age of Colonialism is actually Russia, It kept all its colonies it gained in the 18th century all the way up to 1991. However Russia was all land based and almost the opposite of Britain in everyway which is interesting.

Saying Russia was a colonist power is like saying the US was a colonist power with Manifest Destiny. Both are technically true but not in the same way as British/French/Spanish/Dutch colonies

Russia and the US were trying to expand their nation states and turn their natives into "Russians/Americans". Hence the expansion being mostly land based.

No one considered Kenya to be an extension of Great Britain. It was a colony of Great Britain.

Cool to hear that Algeria wasn't a colony but rightful French territory .

[Georg Ebner]

As the British Empire fell apart, Russia was - and is - the real dominator in colonialism (with China being another case).

[PSOL]

As the British Empire fell apart, Russia was - and is - the real dominator in colonialism (with China being another case).

Maybe Russia was until 1917 and China till 1945, but not the dominant one since as the US became the leader.

[Orser67]

Lfromj makes a great point about Britain's political stability, but personally I'd point to geography as a huge factor as well.

Britain was well-positioned in that it was culturally and economically a part of Europe and took part in the military, economic, and intellectual trends of the time, and yet as an island nation it was harder to invade and could place a greater emphasis on its navy than its competitors. Obviously, having a strong navy is a huge advantage in establishing and defending a far-flung empire, but so too is the natural protection from invasion. Contrast with the Netherlands and especially Portugal, whose colonial empires were negatively impacted by their having to contend with larger, more powerful neighbors.

On the flips side, Britain's general lack of continental ambitions after the 15th century served its colonial ambitions well. Although post-1689 Britain did have some German and Dutch rulers who were still concerned with the continent, and it certainly did get involved in some continental wars which took their toll, in general Britain could at least avoid the worst of the fighting in e.g. the Thirty Year's War and the Napoleonic Wars. These continental ambitions played a huge role in the decline of Spain (whose Habsburg rulers were constantly trying to defend their European empire and staunch the tide of Protestantism) and to a lesser extent France (who was largely stripped of its first colonial empire after the Seven Years War and Napoleonic Wars, but who, unlike Spain, was still powerful enough to gain new colonies in the 19th century).

A third major reason was economics, in particular Britain's status as the epicenter of the Industrial Revolution beginning in the mid-18th century. This answer is long enough already so perhaps I'll add to it later, but the tldr is that a lot of British expansionism was driven by its desire to control new territories to provide resources and markets for British manufactured goods. A great exploration of this in the 19th century is the book "Empire of Cotton" by Sven Beckert.

[lfromnj]

Lfromj makes a great point about Britain's political stability, but personally I'd point to geography as a huge factor as well.

Britain was well-positioned in that it was culturally and economically a part of Europe and took part in the military, economic, and intellectual trends of the time, and yet as an island nation it was harder to invade and could place a greater emphasis on its navy than its competitors. Obviously, having a strong navy is a huge advantage in establishing and defending a far-flung empire, but so too is the natural protection from invasion. Contrast with the Netherlands and especially Portugal, whose colonial empires were negatively impacted by their having to contend with larger, more powerful neighbors.

On the flips side, Britain's general lack of continental ambitions after the 15th century served its colonial ambitions well. Although post-1689 Britain did have some German and Dutch rulers who were still concerned with the continent, and it certainly did get involved in some continental wars which took their toll, in general Britain could at least avoid the worst of the fighting in e.g. the Thirty Year's War and the Napoleonic Wars. These continental ambitions played a huge role in the decline of Spain (whose Habsburg rulers were constantly trying to defend their European empire and staunch the tide of Protestantism) and to a lesser extent France (who was largely stripped of its first colonial empire after the Seven Years War and Napoleonic Wars, but who, unlike Spain, was still powerful enough to gain new colonies in the 19th century).

A third major reason was economics, in particular Britain's status as the epicenter of the Industrial Revolution beginning in the mid-18th century. This answer is long enough already so perhaps I'll add to it later, but the tldr is that a lot of British expansionism was driven by its desire to control new territories to provide resources and markets for British manufactured goods. A great exploration of this in the 19th century is the book "Empire of Cotton" by Sven Beckert.

To go further on economics there was also the banking system the British had which ties in with their political system. Rather than being controlled by an absolute monarch England was more of a broad oligarchy which meant you could safely loan around.  The fact that the UK had so many powerful financial instruments such as banking,loans, insurance etc really gave it an edge in stability and the power to finance their colonies. The Rothschilds unironically won the Napoleonic wars.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

The UK had the industrial revolution while the continent had the Napoleonic wars. France lost that and the 7 years war badly. England had defeated the Spanish in 1588 and Spain didn't manage to invade Gibraltar even as the British were losing the 13 colonies. England had defeated the Dutch in New York. Portugal was the other major colonial power, but they were allied with England.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

Good climate for agriculture leading to population expansion in the early modern agricultural revolution, compact, contained geography which meant homogenous identity and centralised institutions, early integration of the oligarchic economic interests into government via parliament, all of this meaning high levels of taxation were sustainable and married to the development of new financial instruments meant Britain had fiscal power vastly above its weight of population. The contrast with its main, much larger rival, France is instructive: the French monarchy was a decentralised mess with the administration consisting of venal offices and getting taxation out of the parlements required the pulling of teeth, so the state was constantly bankrupt trying to match Britain's fiscal firepower.

[TDAS04]

Being an island helped Britain in some notable ways; it pushed the nation to develop a powerful navy and explore elsewhere, shielded it from invaders and from chaos engulfing the continent, encouraged a strong-willed British identity distinct from Europe, etc. Not that all island counties become powerful, obviously, there are always numerous factors at play, but Britain’s existence as an island clearly played a role in its history and success.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

India, really. It was the heart of the Empire and the part that made sense of the rest of it. It was also the part that none of the other Empires of the period had any equivalent to. The extremely successful commercially-driven part of the Empire in East and South East Asia? Plenty of other European powers were at that game as well, and Britain didn't even have the biggest slice of it (the Netherlands did) even if it played its hand a lot better than everyone else. The quite literal colonies in Australia, Canada and so on? Siberia, Algeria and the Western United States all existed. The African colonies? Obviously matched and then some by others, and really only a few of them were ever of much importance, and even in then in one case (Egypt, which was never formally a colony, of course) purely because of India. The West Indies? That was a mixture right from the beginning and remains so in a tiny and lingering form (it still isn't quite over). So you need to consider India, the slow patchwork conquest of the entire subcontinent by the East India Company, and all of the factors that led to that, because that's the distinctive part.

[Meclazine for Israel]

The British Navy.

That was the technological breakthrough which gave them an 'alien spaceship' like entrance into the world of the savages.

There is also something inherently trustworthy about British society.

London introduced the gold standard which allowed great economic benefits. Although this was a lot later, it does highlight a long and continued trust of the British empire.

[Blue3]

If you say because they had the best navy - why

[OSR stands with Israel]

If you say because they had the best navy - why

1. Having a strong navy is very important in your ability to project power across the globe and the British had or had close to a navy as powerful as the next two most powerful navies combined . This allowed them to project power far better than any other power at the time

2. The UK is an island nation so for any country to successfully invade the UK they had to first defeat the royal navy and since no other navy came close , this meant the UK was close to impossible to invade . This meant they could focus more of their resources and energy in expanding and maintaining their empire while other European nations and to be constantly on guard for a potential invasion

[Blue3]

If you say because they had the best navy - why

1. Having a strong navy is very important in your ability to project power across the globe and the British had or had close to a navy as powerful as the next two most powerful navies combined . This allowed them to project power far better than any other power at the time

2. The UK is an island nation so for any country to successfully invade the UK they had to first defeat the royal navy and since no other navy came close , this meant the UK was close to impossible to invade . This meant they could focus more of their resources and energy in expanding and maintaining their empire while other European nations and to be constantly on guard for a potential invasion

I was asking more why they had a strong navy... being an island can't be the only reason.

[Death of a Salesman]

If you say because they had the best navy - why

1. Having a strong navy is very important in your ability to project power across the globe and the British had or had close to a navy as powerful as the next two most powerful navies combined . This allowed them to project power far better than any other power at the time

2. The UK is an island nation so for any country to successfully invade the UK they had to first defeat the royal navy and since no other navy came close , this meant the UK was close to impossible to invade . This meant they could focus more of their resources and energy in expanding and maintaining their empire while other European nations and to be constantly on guard for a potential invasion

I was asking more why they had a strong navy... being an island can't be the only reason.

They were wealthy and industrialized before anywhere else in the world. "In 1875, Britain accounted for 47% of world production of pig iron and almost 40% of steel." It's not exactly a great mystery.

[Blue3]

If you say because they had the best navy - why

1. Having a strong navy is very important in your ability to project power across the globe and the British had or had close to a navy as powerful as the next two most powerful navies combined . This allowed them to project power far better than any other power at the time

2. The UK is an island nation so for any country to successfully invade the UK they had to first defeat the royal navy and since no other navy came close , this meant the UK was close to impossible to invade . This meant they could focus more of their resources and energy in expanding and maintaining their empire while other European nations and to be constantly on guard for a potential invasion

I was asking more why they had a strong navy... being an island can't be the only reason.

They were wealthy and industrialized before anywhere else in the world. "In 1875, Britain accounted for 47% of world production of pig iron and almost 40% of steel." It's not exactly a great mystery.

Again… why?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Again… why?

The Industrial Revolution happening in Britain?

[Antonio the Sixth]

If you say because they had the best navy - why

1. Having a strong navy is very important in your ability to project power across the globe and the British had or had close to a navy as powerful as the next two most powerful navies combined . This allowed them to project power far better than any other power at the time

2. The UK is an island nation so for any country to successfully invade the UK they had to first defeat the royal navy and since no other navy came close , this meant the UK was close to impossible to invade . This meant they could focus more of their resources and energy in expanding and maintaining their empire while other European nations and to be constantly on guard for a potential invasion

I was asking more why they had a strong navy... being an island can't be the only reason.

They were wealthy and industrialized before anywhere else in the world. "In 1875, Britain accounted for 47% of world production of pig iron and almost 40% of steel." It's not exactly a great mystery.

There's that, but tbf British naval superiority dates back to much earlier than 1875. Of course a solid production base was key to maintaining it, but we have to recognize that the decision to put so many resources into shipbuilding was also a policy decision of British monarchs from the Tudors on (with precursors all the way back to Alfred the Great, but taking that aside). When it became clear that England's aspirations to become a European power had failed after the Hundred Years War, they gradually oriented themselves toward becoming a maritime power instead, and clearly this choice paid off big time.

Another factor beyond the British navy was colonial policy. Britain successfully incentivized significant settlement in its overseas colonies, something France for example never managed to get off the ground (until, well, Algeria...). This was the key reason for Britain's victory in the overseas fronts of the Seven Years War, thus wiping out its most important rival (Spain's star was already well on the wane by then).

[Blue3]

Again… why?

The Industrial Revolution happening in Britain?

And why did it happen there first, and lag behind in other countries?

But it seems to me like Britain was already becoming the dominant power even before their Industrial Revolution started.

[lfromnj]

Lets look at the other major players in the age of Colonialism.
Almost all of them had a reset during the Napoleonic wars where they lost most of their territories or sold them . Britain with its Navy managed to stay out of the fray and come out on top

Political stability also helps . Britain didn't have a civil war past 1650 and its transition to a constitutional monarchy in 1689 was peaceful . Rather than the rapid swings between liberalism and reactionaries Britain kept a steady and slow trend of liberalism and avoided years such as 1848 .
France- already infamous
Spain- The war of the Spanish Succession along with the Trieno Liberal from 1820 to 1823 when Spain gave up on many of its colonies.
Other countries like Italy/Germany weren't unified.
Arguably the other great dominator of the Age of Colonialism is actually Russia, It kept all its colonies it gained in the 18th century all the way up to 1991. However Russia was all land based and almost the opposite of Britain in everyway which is interesting.

Saying Russia was a colonist power is like saying the US was a colonist power with Manifest Destiny. Both are technically true but not in the same way as British/French/Spanish/Dutch colonies

Russia and the US were trying to expand their nation states and turn their natives into "Russians/Americans". Hence the expansion being mostly land based.

No one considered Kenya to be an extension of Great Britain. It was a colony of Great Britain.

Not to call you out again but something hillarious I just realized is that the British are blamed for drawing borders poorly resulting in the India Pakistan and the Israel Palestine conflicts but the Soviets also drew borders even worse and perhaps on purpose to divide and conquer .
1. Armenia Azerbaijan
2. The Fergana Valley in Central Asia with all the stans.
3. Kruschchevs giving Crimea to Ukraine. This last one did not have bad intentions though.

[Agonized-Statism]

Political and financial stability from being an island and a constitutional as opposed to absolute monarchy, and Mahan's Influence of Sea Power upon History thesis is helpful here.