I STRONGLY DISAGREE! Being as famous as I am on TH-cam, I know that it gets hard to read every comment I get. I try my best, but I am just so famous, that I can't do it much longer. Sorry, dear sha
"Their plan was certainly extreme, and their idiocy correspondingly immense" A fine addition to my collection of "anime plot or history summary" quotes
"The Sun never set on the British Empire" didn't mean it would never end, it was quite literal. There was never a time of day were the sun wasn't above a part of it
@@richeybaumann1755And in I believe 2042 there’ll be an eclipse over them during that time, and the sun will finally (kinda) set on the empire (unless we can conquer somewhere else before that point)
We did invent the saying. Take everything and the kitchen sink. If it isn't bolted to the floor, we're having it. And sometimes even when it is bolted down.
To be fair, the people living in Egypt had been pillaging the ruins for millennia and stealing stones to build their houses so like… when Britain showed up to nick the capstones nobody in the country had a concept of the value of the Pyramids but the British.
As a Scotsman, who is deeply interested in the history of Britain, I say you did a really good job summarizing. You missed some things, but if you didn't it would be 6 hours long.
@@Alaryk111 Not the biggest fan. The EU has a wait time to be accepted, even if you meet all the requirements for a new member state, and it would be like Brexit again as our biggest trading partner is the other parts of the UK. Specifically England. I'm not a fan of the Westminster government, and the Anglo-focused parliament where Scotland makes up 56 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons (which is technically an over representation of one, by population) but the issue is that the SNP are not a healthy party.
Frenchman standing on the coast looking out with binoculars “Monsieur, the britONs.. they have... stopped fiegh-teng eachother.” The whole world: shit.
@@jasonreed7522 technically, kazakhstan has access to the caspian sea, but idk if you wanna count that for landlocked since it's an inland sea with no connection to the outside.
TH-camrs of culture I see! “Baldrick, you have built a working time machine. And are therefore, the greatest genius who has ever lived.” -Blackadder, Blackadder Goes Forth
A British video? I say, I am certain that it will simultaneously be both the most _civilized_ and _uncivilized_ video we have ever seen, as any good British video must be!
Being English myself and having done a decent dive into both domestic and imperial UK history, I can say the motto of England or at least London, specifically the subset of the city known as The City of London, might as well be: "Nowhere will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy". Were it not for them having several million working class hostages, I'd advocate the city be burned down harder than the great fire and bombed off the face of the earth more effectively than the Blitz and then and only then might the world have some hope of recovery, some modicum of justice for the crimes of the sneering jackles who inhabit that place. The british ruling class are, I am convinced the most effective, dangerous and down right evil group of power jockies the human species has ever produced. Whilst they remain power, the world might never be free.
Blue: "And so the World Wars happened." Me, a WWI historian: !!! Blue: "Yes, they're very important. We're not getting into it." Me: - Sad WWI historian noises-
Then there's this old saw: The British traveled halfway around the world looking for spices, found them, and then decided not to bother with them in their cuisine!
Interestingly the reason British food was bland was the industrial revolution, by dismantling the peasantry we also got rid of the traditional knowledge about cooking
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@@oscarnewman1374 I mean I was just making a silly joke. Our food wasn't actually that bland it just didn't use lots of different spices, not sure what "dismantling the peasantry" has got to do with it, we still used the same wide variety of herbs in various roasts and pies.
@@discountchocolate4577, Top 5 Scariest Anthems to Hear while being Colonised: 1, The Star-Spangled Banner; 2, Rule Britannia; 3, Госудáрственный гимн Росси́йской Федерáции; 4, Horst-Wessel-Lied; 5, La Marcha Granadera.
But Blue you missed the amazing part were Britain declared itself the centre of the world, with the times zones and trade. Also just the fact that this video is in English says a lot about the British Empire.
Not sure it actually went that way. Most trade maps had Greenwich as the Prime Meridian, and also the USA had set their time zone based on GMT. So an international conference thought it made sense
@@andyhemsted4570 True, yet it probably was decided it made sense due to the sheer power Britain had at the time. If a lot of the geopolitical world is based on what Britain does, best make the London area the "center of the world." It's that same reason that helps explain why most economies are based on the standard of the US Dollar. It made sense to do that because the USA had the most power when they changed from the Gold Standard, from physical to inferred value.
Red can you do a video on some Slavic mythology and god's? They aren't very well known but you might have fun. For example you can talk about Veles, Cernebog and Perun. You can also talk about creatures from vampires to vilas to multy headed dragon's named Lamija
Edward Said once wrote: "Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate."
I remember actually reading some quotes from a 1900’s parliamentary debate where several leftist politicians called out this excuse of ‘stopping slavery in savage nations’ (which we claimed to do once banning it ourselves) Basically pointing out that this excuse would mean we’d be at war forever and the colonialists weren’t really that interested in the case in the first place. They also pointed out that the public were basically unaware of how much money we were losing doing all this conquering and would be appalled to find out about how our forces were treating people abroad. Because it really was a handful of greedy politicians wanting to take over these places and insisting to the public that it was a Very Good Thing
@@mollymcdade4031 To be fair, atop all of that we DID put the Atlantic Slave Trade in the ground. We just did the same thing America did in Afghanistan and moved directly into political statecraft at the cost of lives and money.
@@Bushflare The Atlantic slave trade was mostly done in by the British Captains though. They were justifiably zealous despite getting slapped on the wrist regularly for going beyond what was technically legal. Eventually the politicians caved and let them do their thing (although knowing politicians, this was probably more because it harmed rival powers than altruism).
@@deathbower This is true and condemnable but Britain was also the nation that put a stop to it. The Africans had been dealing in slaves internally for centuries and the Europeans just jumped into that trade and supercharged it. When the abolitionists gained enough power to overcome the greed Britain then went to war not with itself like America but with the nations that were the lynchpins of the slave trade. A cynic would say this was because Britain was beyond the point where it benefitted from slavery and they’d probably be correct to some degree but as always history is rarely decided by a single factor and the strain of English Liberalism born on the isles was instrumental in the freeing of the slaves as well as the mostly peaceful dissolution of the Empire because England over time evolved to become very concerned with the concept of fairness and it was folks like Wilberforce and Gandhi who used their hearts and minds to make it impossible for the Emperor to continue without clothes. The fascinating part of British history is how in spite of the evils inflicted and the damage done there is still so much virtue milling about within. The English really we’re convinced they were the good guys simply because they were rarely the *worst* guys. The internal contradictions are fascinating.
This channels ability to tackle serious topics with the level of severity they deserve yet still seamlessly move to lighter tones and less severe topics without any jarring shifts will always amaze me. 4:56 was so well done, it allowed enough for the horror and tragedy and deserved abhorrence to sink in without the topic or overall flow of the video being shifted off- focus. Red, Blue and Indigo always do such an amazing job.
I didn't like how he talked about Britains participation in slave trade, but he didn't mention that it was Britain who ended the Atlantic slave trade, and also the African and middle Eastern slave trade that had been going on for thousands of years
"Napoleon's own hubris" I mean, also Britain's infinite amount of cash which allowed them to pay the entirety of Europe to attack Napoleon. That had a small role.
@@EcclesiastesLiker-py5ts well Britain’s cash and trade persuaded the Russians to stop the embargo which resulted in napoleons biggest defeat. The British were heavily involved in napoleons failure at the peninsular campaign which sapped resources and the British played the biggest role at Waterloo. So the British played an important role in all three of napoleons major downfalls.
Could you guys do something about the Isle of Mann? It's the first governmental body to give women the right to vote, has possibly the longest running parliament in the world, and with a fascinating blend of Gaelic and Norse culture.
@@minutemansam1214 I said possibly, and the Manx one is over 1000 years old Edit: I checked both to make sure. I don't think there's any way to know which is older, since records would be pretty scarce from the 900's. But the Isle of Mann has some serious Nordic influence, so it's entirely possible they were founded around the same time.
Also Wales spent most of the first millennium fighting Rome, the Angelo Saxons and the Normans. There is a reason there are more castles in Wales per capita then anywhere else and it wasn't because the architecture was nice.
Nah mate. I'd rather we not meme supporting british colonialism. Make jokes at the expense of empire, by all means. But jokes implying you support the british empire ironically, when too many people actually do, just aren't funny anymore. The attitude of "rule britannia" is responsible for our violently racist immigration policies, for the shot in the foot of Brexit, for our current corrupt and incompetent leadership who have killed over 150,000 predominantly minoritised people with their mishandling of the coronavirus.
@@Minihood31770 Cool idea but alternatively the Empire is fun and cool and Zulu is an awesome movie so like… nobody worth paying attention to gives a damn. The Empire is fine to enjoy.
@ do you know what Bolshevism is, or do you think whomever understands that your country or nation has done anything bad is somehow a totalitarian. This comment has nothing to do with economics, or the amount of authority a governing body should have, Bloshevism isn't a term which should be used willy-nilly, this makes people assume a false meaning of the term, making your comment an anti-democratic misdemeanor. Yours Sincerely, a stranger on the internet.
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@@ipadair7345 I do actually, specifically I said it in reference to how the commenter was suggesting people should be allowed to make jokes about Empire. Totalitarian regimes, like the USSR, banned jokes. Quod erat demonstrandum... I'll let you work out the rest. Yours (quite insincerely), Tristan
The people that James sent to Ireland to "colonize" were the border reavers, who frequently made their living raiding across the border between Scotland and England. (The Scottish king James) shipped them off to Ireland so whatever trouble they habitually caused, wouldn't be trouble for a newly united Britain.
Im very proud of blue for delving so far into the age of vanity. I understand as a classicist it probably hurts his soul but as someone fascinated by this period it's wonderful to hear blue's take. After all its the period of history most relevant to formation of the modern world despite how convoluted it can be. Fantastic workas always!
The myths of the British Isles are very interesting. Most know of the Arthurian legends, but the Welsh tales in the Mabinogion and Irish sagas are very nice too. Aside from that it is very interesting to try to find out about pre-Christian religion in the Isles. Super cool stuffs
Red has complained in another video that pre-Christian Irish mythology is largely lost, due to having been heavily rewritten by Christian missionaries.
Arthurian legends are also Welsh for the most part, aside from the occassional additions the English and French made when they used it for their romantic periods
English myth is really complicated because we probably had a lot of original myths and legends but they’ve kind of been buried thanks to being conquered by the Romans and Vikings and taking on their myths.
There are celtic myths but again much like Irish myths a lot of them have been Christianised or erased over time. As for Anglo Saxon, its speculated Rome Assimilated some of their gods but because Rome has been sacked so many times we don't know which ones. The oldest English original poem is Beowulf and it doesn't even take place in Britain.
And to be fair, many of those 22 only came about after Britain retired from the Empire Business to begin with. Had they existed beforehand they might not have been so lucky.
@Sean and when I was in eleventh grade in America, I had to learn about your colonization efforts as well as a bunch of other stuff America had no role in. What's your point? It's world history. There's more history you should know than what happened in your country
This was one of the most hilarious ones yet, thank you for the humorous breakdown. ...Like, dear gods though, at one point I paused and said to myself "This sounds like every game of civilization I've ever played" especially "Throw infinity money at every conflict to make it go away" XD
Or rather Sailor: Hey look land! Highly Decorated Military General: Well we should definitely go and take all the stuff- I mean liberate them Sailor: What? General: What?
Interestingly enough Britian, for much of the history if its empire, wasnt looking for land for its own sake. It only really cared about controlling strategic coast lines and making others trade on good terms with us. It refused requests to join the empire. This does change during the scramble for africa as fear of other's taking the land made Britiajntake land itself
@@internetenjoyer1044 Exactly, Mexico, Uruguay and Ethiopia wanted to join the empire but the British didn't let them. Britain also protected south American countries, because after the fall of spanish rule there the US and other European powers wanted to colonise it
Look at modern America and the crippled, collapsing giant it has become. Power That great is too heavy for any structure to bear for too long. The wheel of history turns and those at the top eventually find themselves crushed beneath the bottom.
@@jamieyoung9206 and to create. remember that many coutnries were clammering to join the British empire; it couldnt have existed without bringing benefits to people
This is as fair and accurate as a blind person with one arm using a bow and arrow. But I respect the effort to condense it into 12 mins is an enormous challenge. A very American perspective on British History.
@@DCPTF2 oh ffs not that argument again. The people that sold the slaves to the british had a very differrent idea of what slavery was. (nonetheless still cruel). A kind of indentured servitude, where you could be set free, staring to see the differences. these african slavers would've not sold them if they knew what would happen to them
@@roberthall7689 The Atlantic Slave Trade Slavery continued on the far coast of Africa and proliferates within many places in Africa even today. But the Atlantic one is the only slave trade people seem concerned with.
Monarch: Mummy Daddy Military: Yes honey? Monarch: I want that toy! Military: But you already have plenty of toys. Monarch: I know, but I want it, PLEASEEEE! Military: Ok dear.
The Opium Wars is an under appreciated part of British history that plays a greatly understated role in current events in regards to how China handles itself.
I started my B.A in History about the time I found this channel and it’s been very nice to these videos as stepping stones to work off of. Entertaining in their own right they’ve helped me slog through so much research. Thank you ❤️
Videos like this are good because it reminds people that nations are moved by powerful individuals rather than the nation as a whole deciding to invade somewhere or whatever. It's always a king, politician or industrialist (all three working together), in an attempt to increase personal power, never the everyday man. A factory worker in London was hardly dictating the actions of the elites, but simply serving the expansion of power through necessity for work.
@@TheSolarWolf revolutions against regimes tends to be lead by people from the elite class rather than a member of the underclass. Regardless, my point being that 97% of the British people had very little say on the actions of its leaders. They weren't asked if they wanted to participate in slavery or empire building or industrialisation, they were events that happened to and around them. Understanding history we can see that rather than blaming entire ethnic groups we should recognise the recurring behaviors of unaccountable leaders.
Honestly appreciate the philosophy of who should own what? That ran through this episode, it's so key in Britain right now and for humanity in general. The sooner we realise that we all own everything the better.
@@AnInsaneOstrich Until we decided that eating McFatnolds and watching Netflix for all time was better than building a glorious future for the world. The Cold War sucked, but it got us a man on the moon. What had the 21st century gotten us, besides a nation on the verge of civil war and political, economic, and demographic collapse?
@@jamesharding3459 I'm fairly certain a man on the moon is not worth being on the verge of total atomic annihilation. We are still making technological and medical advances, even today. Think about what technology was like in the year 2000 and think about what it is like now. We have self driving cars, vastly more advanced phones and computers, even better rocket technology for reaching the moon and other parts of out solar system.
@@AnInsaneOstrich It was more a gripe at the downward spiral of the US than praising the Cold War. Having 10,000-odd nukes pointed our way was less than fun, according to everyone I know who’s old enough to remember it.
I will be honest as a Englishman I tend to take a 'Warts and all' approach to our history. The good, the bad and the ugly. I laud our successes, criticise our failures and try to learn from the dark underbelly which was a part of it to not make the same mistakes twice. For all the great (not necessarily good) things the empire did it cannot be separated from all the flaws. Britain is a model on which many nations got their infrastructure, sports, even good portions of systems of governments - but at the same time the cost that was to local people and cultures. I bring this up namely because this is a big part of the British consciousness, that being our pride in Empire while also accepting what it did. I am neither attempting to start a argument on the nature of Empire, but more provide a current perception of British culture on Empire that is not the chest pounding of 'Empire good' or the attitude of 'empire bad.'
Interestingly the erasure of the Scottish clan system wasn’t actually done by the English specifically (though people still blame us) but rather Scottish nobles who wanted to exert more control over their lands in the highlands. Which is another example of the Scottish hurting themselves and then blaming it on England
I feel like you should have clarified the Puritanism of the English Parliament during the English civil war and wars of the 3 kingdoms. You make it seem like the Scottish turned on the English after Charles was executed, but in actuality after the first English civil war the Scots changed sides due to a secret deal with Charles, thus why Charles the second lead 2 more civil wars
"Hey, King George, what's the opposite of tea? YEET!" is hand down the best example of modern language enabling *pure gold* historical humor that would have made absolutely zero sense at the time. Well done, Blue. 🤣🤣
i think one of the reasons why we dunk so hard on the British Empire is because it is still fairly _recent_ . other empires are _old_ in comparison, which gives us a level of distance we don't have with the British empire. mind you, i'm not trying to justify or defend what Britain did when they decided to go sicko mode and exploit countries and people for financial gain, but this isn't unique to the British Empire. and i think the reason why we think of the BE as "the villain" is because their actions are still fresh in our memory and we still feel the trickle down of their actions today. what i'm trying to get at is that history is complex and it's a big disservice to paint everything as black or white when most of history is in the grey zone.
The British Empire is the villain according to who? They spread enlightenment values more than any other single political entity. India today is a British style democracy. They were certainly not a democracy before the British got there.
Britain- Seeing Spain colonizing “Ok, my turn” America seening Britain colonizing “right that down, right that down!” I see I have made a spell error but I don’t care
@@v_cpt-phasma_v689 I don't think the same could be said for Syria and Iraq after we left them with lovely straight lined borders that made no cultural sense. I'm a patriotic brit but we were terrible at drawing borders
@@lewis123417 oh yeah but thats because our plan behind borders wasnt based on ethnic regions, our borders were planned around allied tribal leaders/governers and we gave them whatever territory they wanted, to do it based on ethnic regions would have meant lots of smaller nations that probably wouldve ended up fighting eachother anyway.
I really appreciate you going all the way up to the New Millennium. I have a terrible bias that "History" and the perceived antiquated ideas of Empire somehow end after WWII. It doesn't. It is all alive and well, albeit with different tools and rhetoric. Britain has a huge gravity in the events of history and I am not only impressed with how much I learned but that I learned it in ~12 minutes. Nice.
I dont know, imperialism took on such a different form after the post-WW2 revolutions that I’m not sure imperialism is even the right word for it anymore. There’s no other word for it though.
Some further suggested readings to try unpack the world's largest empire. Empire by Niall Ferguson is a great look at the good, bad and the ugly of the empire from its inception as funder of piracy to its collapse as basically a vassal of its bastard child. The Pax Britannica Series by Jan Morris is an excellent look at what life was like across the British Empire in the 19th and early 20th century. Very good books! Explains a lot about the ideology behind British imperialism. And a History of the English People by Paul Johnson is also really good, especially for explaining the foundations of the early empire. I enjoyed this video! Impartial and insightful. But I also think it's important to create a distinction between pre and post-Victoria Britain. Britain before Victoria was very much a profit-driven empire that didn't even acknowledge its own imperial nature, while it was Victoria's era that really started developing the British idea of what their empire meant to themselves and the world. Also, would have liked a mention of Britain's instrumental role in the abolition of the slave trade.
Hey, talking about evictions in Scotland and Ireland, don't forget the English were thrown off their lands too through enclosure. Feel like England is getting all the blame here.... WE DIDN'T ASK TO BE A UNION!! (true, it was a Scottish king who inherited the English throne that forced us to unite despite the English parliament not wanting to).
Blue: What’s the opposite of tea? Yeet! Me: *dies from laughter* Blue: I will not mourn the British Empire but I will mourn Hong Kong Me: *is crying inside* - A Hong Konger
ngl as a British person studying British history... this was really good! you got all the important beats and talked about the important stuff as well as stuff non-British people don't always understand like the culture-mix and the very heavy effect that the empire/dissolution has on modern-day Britain. I really enjoyed it!
Favourite piece: The invention of popular sovereignity by a parliament just deciding its boss now (while kinda being laughably transparent power realpoliticians at the same time).
Yo, quick point of clarification from an irishman because its admittedly confusing. 1922 was the formation of the Irish Free State which was technically still a dominion of Britain. It wasn't until the late 30's that the Irish government wrote their own new constitution and affirmed themselves as an independent nation, the Republic of Ireland, and by then war with the Third Reich was looming and Britain had bigger fish to fry so they let it go
I thought so. Most folks tend to think of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and maybe sometimes South Africa when they think of the dominions because they spent ages as dominions (and featured in the WW1 propaganda art with the lion and its cubs) but there were quite a few other dominions that had shorter time periods as dominions (Ireland, India, Pakistan, Ceylon, I'm sure I'm forgetting a few). Dominion's really just the most autonomous form of British colony, really.
Of all your videos on the Isles, I can say this one is my favourite. You hit that great sweet spot in a historical video few can achieve; the appreciation of achievements, innovation and even conquest, tempered by the horrors of reality.
The whole sense of belonging in Britain is honestly very contested with nearly noone feeling like they live as a British citizen, thank you for drawing attention to this, I hope it changes in the future
The white Britons feel ignored because of the modern attempts to import and champion the minorities. The minorities feel ignored because the people championing them want them to feel different. The problem will only change when people decide on what it means to be a Briton culturally. Not a White, Black, Brown, etc. Briton, but that’s the conversation we’re having right now. Eternal grievance politics. A battle to the bottom of greatest victimhood. There is no way to build anything from a mentality that only cares to break things apart. Such a waste…
@@katainj9861 It’ll be a while yet before folks like me get a word in to the conversation. If history is any indicator (and when has it not been) we’ve got 10-20 years of Longform civilisational collapse beginning to unfold ahead of us and the decisions we all take about what we want to look like coming out of that are going to be pivotal. The enlightenment era is more or less at it’s logical conclusion. Individualism has destroyed everything important in life and manifested in critical theory which is being wielded like a torch in a proverbial Library of Alexandria. This is as far as these ideologies can take us and we can only hope the slingshot backwards doesn’t end up sending us somewhere more dire than where we currently stand.
10:45 My parents were born in British Hong Kong. Although the first 15 years post-handover were the golden age of HK, it was sadly and inevitably going to come to an end sooner or later. Really appreciate that how it was back then was mentioned in the video!
I love how wide reaching and evenly spread this is, really reads different when you see just how quickly we went from, Revolution to World War in the grand scheme of things is pretty wild. It really did all happen very quickly.
I would love a video that takes a little longer to focus on the more interesting things that came out of the British empire. Obviously, as everyone knows, there was a lot going on that wasn't cool, but the little good that did come of it is fascinating
That would be a horrible choice because the horrible far far outweighed any remote good. And any video that wants to accurately cover it can not ever present it like they were remotely equal amounts. The British empire was a deeply evil construct, and anyone with integrity needs to tonally convey that accurately.
@@lizardlegend42 So it's horrible to teach historical facts? I'm not advocating for empire, or suggesting historical revisionism. Life is more complicated than "there is bad and good, and only evil things happen as a result of bad actions". Do you also thing we should not tell people about the airplanes they use benefitting from world war 2? Or radio technology they use to watch online videos?
Well you can’t entirely blame Britain for how partition turned out the way it did. The leadership of AIML was quite insistent that it would happen. Often sowing violence between Muslims and Hindus to counter any notions of one united india.
Yes, that is the version that Indians like to push forward, but the story has a bit more nuance than that. A more complete story is one of Muslim political leaders first trying to work with and within the Indian Congress, coming face to face with the very real and very strong strains of Hindu-supremacy in that party and growing generally in society (which have metastasized as the RSS supported Fascist BJP government today), and deciding that in light of this there was no future for Muslims in independent India. That is the trajectory that Jinnah himself followed - Indian narratives which seek to paint him as a power-hungary fanatic who used religion to divide the country ignore the reality that he started his political career in the Congress party and tried to work towards a future of cooperation between Hindus and Muslims. His experiences there, however, eventually convinced him that indepdence was the only option. Its a complicated story.
Watching from Hong Kong and man I'm glad you mentioned us 🥺 We're maybe the only city (not country because the "motherland" would have my head) that flourished as a colony.
@@mrmacguff1n I fully recognise that the Hundred Acre Wood takeover (nice one) is also a form of colonialism, but I would rather have the British kind of coloniser. (Would talk about independence but it's literally illegal to talk it at all)
@@mintbrownieangelfish-6114 Thank you. It's only just become like this in the last two years. Hope I'll live to see more change (the good kind), but I think it'll get worse before it can get better.
I would like to be on record both as saying you are a madman for taking on all of this in one video and that you did a shockingly complete job for so little time.
With Hong Kong, Britain wasn’t really give much choice. Much of the city was on land officially leased from China. The PRC made it very clear that if Britain wouldn’t give it back, they’d take it back.
This is a great video. The British Empire was shorter than most but was off the charts in terms of widespread cultural impact. It shaped the modern world but the cost was (and continues to be) staggering. As long as everyone keeps trying to fix what is wrong we should be mostly OK in the long run, maybe I hope perhaps? I tell myself that the long arc of history is one of slow steady cultural progressivism but in the span of any one person's lifetime things can get really crazy. This was a really thought provoking video, thanks Blue!
a phrase i always kind of liked with the Britsh empire was that it "Was Wom in a fit of absentmendiness" meant to reflect the lack of overall central control of the policy of imperal aquisition
Britain: *Sees unclaimed land
Britain: ...
Britain: *SIPS TEA AGGRESSIVELY
-B
it's only a matter of time until the spiffing brit will arrive in this comment section
Dang, am I only the 3rd reply here? I’m at the end of the video!
*Sees claimed land*
…
*CHUGS TEA AND CONQUER ANYWAYS*
The French when the saw the British colonizing :
- How dare you do this !
*Saw the massive money it makes*
-… Without me !
Quite right, tally ho!
"France was egging them on" - that sentence is doing A LOT of heavy lifting.
A fine example of the art of understatement on such a scale
Talk about a British-grade understatement…
To this day.
Yup to the point they bankrupted themselves
yeah Americans don’t like the idea that anyone helped them with the revolutionary war
"Geopolitical Megazord" may be my new favorite sentence.
I can even hear the faint go go brittania afterwards too
I STRONGLY DISAGREE! Being as famous as I am on TH-cam, I know that it gets hard to read every comment I get. I try my best, but I am just so famous, that I can't do it much longer. Sorry, dear sha
@@AxxLAfriku Shut up!
@UCHxeqZ4Qfe7ZdcyflX-yTIA ^ what they said 😂😆🤣
I love the “geopolitical megazord” bit because the isles look like the torso and legs 😂.
"Their plan was certainly extreme, and their idiocy correspondingly immense"
A fine addition to my collection of "anime plot or history summary" quotes
Any more you'd like to share? We can guess below.
Or the plans a D&D group cooks up.
Some people don't half ass anything. They go all in, even if means on stupidity
"The Sun never set on the British Empire" didn't mean it would never end, it was quite literal. There was never a time of day were the sun wasn't above a part of it
It’s worth mentioning that the sun still hasn’t set on the British Empire through her overseas dominions
@@myamdane6895I mean most are in the western hemisphere tho right so it does, just not for very long
@alexcrazy1492 nope, not yet. The Pitcairn Islands are the only part under the sun for like an hour between 00:00 and 01:00 UTC.
@@richeybaumann1755And in I believe 2042 there’ll be an eclipse over them during that time, and the sun will finally (kinda) set on the empire (unless we can conquer somewhere else before that point)
@@insertnamehere9718actually Britain has agreed to cede the Indian Ocean Territory to Mauritius, and when that happens the sun will set
Reminds me of something I read recently: "the only reason there are pyramids in Egipt is they are too heavy to move to the british museum"
We did invent the saying. Take everything and the kitchen sink. If it isn't bolted to the floor, we're having it. And sometimes even when it is bolted down.
There's a reason the British museum is called the biggest fence in history
"Welcome to the british museum. Don't ask where we got all this stuff!"
We worked out how to move stonehenge back in the iron age, we probably could have moved the pyramids if we wanted...
To be fair, the people living in Egypt had been pillaging the ruins for millennia and stealing stones to build their houses so like… when Britain showed up to nick the capstones nobody in the country had a concept of the value of the Pyramids but the British.
As a Scotsman, who is deeply interested in the history of Britain, I say you did a really good job summarizing. You missed some things, but if you didn't it would be 6 hours long.
What's your opinion on Scottish independence?
@@Alaryk111 Not really independence if you join the EU though...
@@Alaryk111 Not the biggest fan. The EU has a wait time to be accepted, even if you meet all the requirements for a new member state, and it would be like Brexit again as our biggest trading partner is the other parts of the UK. Specifically England. I'm not a fan of the Westminster government, and the Anglo-focused parliament where Scotland makes up 56 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons (which is technically an over representation of one, by population) but the issue is that the SNP are not a healthy party.
@@DFGHJKL1995 I'm from Glasgow specifically, and I saw Blue's old Scotland vid. He's got the patter.
@@georgethompson1460 I wouldn't mind joining the EU, the EU hasn't been mistreating Scotland for nearly a millennia
Frenchman standing on the coast looking out with binoculars
“Monsieur, the britONs.. they have... stopped fiegh-teng eachother.”
The whole world: shit.
As if we needed more similarities with Warhammer Orks…
@@Bushflare HUMIESSS
I mean they were based off of football hooligans
@@potatuslied553 that was the joke, yes.
@@Bushflare dem gits need krumpin'
Damn 4:56 was a really succinct but strong emotional beat. Good writing Blue, and good editing Indigo
Idigo
Why are you everywere
@@emperorofwends8875 9/12/21, I will be in your dream.
@@Stoneworks OWO and Justin were chill, while Stoneworks be out here giving people nightmares
Oh, I recognize you. Still have to catch up on the series about the worldbuilding server, but I will soon.
"Britain became the biggest empire in Human History."
Wales: "And I helped!"
Tbf wales did have lot of coal to help fuel the industrial revolution iirc
hell yeah, welsh + english sailors were class
@@jlg8560 West country I.e Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Devonshire maybe Cornwall andHampshire not the welsh or northern and eastern english
@@mrbritannia3833 cardiff had a huge amount of sailors. I know im just generalising?
@@jlg8560 Oh I thought we were talking about good sailors not just sailors
World: *"Hey, Britain, how many countries did you colonized ?"*
Britain: *Start singing Yakko's World*
yakko's world but it's only where britain's been
@@StarshadowMelody
If you do it with only nations Britain or her cultural children have won wars it’s basically the whole song.
@@StarshadowMelody That requires almost no cuts.
A map of nations Britain hasn't invaded is basically just a map of double landlocked nations like Kazakhstan.
@@jasonreed7522 technically, kazakhstan has access to the caspian sea, but idk if you wanna count that for landlocked since it's an inland sea with no connection to the outside.
Overly Sarcastic Productions: "History Summarized: Britain"
Me: "I'm Carving 'Baldric' Sir!"
“My family and other animals”- Blackadder
Hear the word I sing!
War's a horrid thing....
i have a cunning plan
TH-camrs of culture I see!
“Baldrick, you have built a working time machine. And are therefore, the greatest genius who has ever lived.”
-Blackadder, Blackadder Goes Forth
I read this comment and immediately burst out laughing.
"Hey King George, what's the opposite of tea? YEET!"
*almost spits out hot mouthful of therapeutic tannins
I don't care if it's a dead meme that will never be anything short of the perfect summary of that event
I wasn't even drinking anything yet *same*.
I laughed way too hard at that.
* spits out liquid of rotten fruit and boiled water
@@themandownstairs4765 Memes never die. We still have jokes in English that were coined thousands of years ago.
A British video? I say, I am certain that it will simultaneously be both the most _civilized_ and _uncivilized_ video we have ever seen, as any good British video must be!
*and Irish too
@@beaglaoich4418 not just the Celts... but the Angles, and the Saxons, too!
@@ThinWhiteAxe you hate sand...dont you
Being English myself and having done a decent dive into both domestic and imperial UK history, I can say the motto of England or at least London, specifically the subset of the city known as The City of London, might as well be: "Nowhere will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy".
Were it not for them having several million working class hostages, I'd advocate the city be burned down harder than the great fire and bombed off the face of the earth more effectively than the Blitz and then and only then might the world have some hope of recovery, some modicum of justice for the crimes of the sneering jackles who inhabit that place. The british ruling class are, I am convinced the most effective, dangerous and down right evil group of power jockies the human species has ever produced. Whilst they remain power, the world might never be free.
@@beaglaoich4418 the Irish are British, they’re from the British Isles whether they like it or not.
Blue: "And so the World Wars happened."
Me, a WWI historian: !!!
Blue: "Yes, they're very important. We're not getting into it."
Me: - Sad WWI historian noises-
I can sum up WW1 history in five words: "And then things got worse."
@@AtholAnderson Yes, but that just doesn't do justice to the scope of it.
@@tyrannosaurusrhett “And then things got worse for everyone who didn’t have money or who’s name ended with Romanov”
How many times have you watched Blackadder Goes Forth?
@@piperhays8698 “No, those guys just had to wait a _little_ bit for their problems…”
We made history spicy because our food wasn't...
Then there's this old saw: The British traveled halfway around the world looking for spices, found them, and then decided not to bother with them in their cuisine!
@@thexalon curry houses?
Interestingly the reason British food was bland was the industrial revolution, by dismantling the peasantry we also got rid of the traditional knowledge about cooking
@@oscarnewman1374 I mean I was just making a silly joke. Our food wasn't actually that bland it just didn't use lots of different spices, not sure what "dismantling the peasantry" has got to do with it, we still used the same wide variety of herbs in various roasts and pies.
...due to spice not growing in britain.
That feeling when you're chilling on a island in the Pacific and the waves start playing "God Save The Queen"
Nightmare-inducing. Only the Star-Spangled Banner would be scarier.
@@discountchocolate4577, Top 5 Scariest Anthems to Hear while being Colonised:
1, The Star-Spangled Banner;
2, Rule Britannia;
3, Госудáрственный гимн Росси́йской Федерáции;
4, Horst-Wessel-Lied;
5, La Marcha Granadera.
@@glasscardproductions4736 Battotai should be an honourable mention
@@YataTheFifteenth
If this was a Top 10 list, Battotai would be 6th.
quote i will never forget:
blue: what's the opposite of tea?
blue: *YEET*
This line almost made me spit out my coffee... Which I'm now realizing is pretty ironic
I don’t get it.
@@flatlo Search up 'Boston tea party'
During the American Revolution rebels dressed up as native Americans, sneaked into a tea ship and like yeeted millions of tea over lol
@@flatlo also, tea could very easily be spelled "teey" without changing how it's pronounced, which written backwards (the opposite) is yeet
Fun fact: After being sworn in as king, Charles II had Cromwell's corpse dug up and executed posthumously to get revenge for his father
Wasn't his head also left ontop of parliaments roof for like 80 years lol
@@lewis123417 28 years, actually
How is that fun?
Pettiness can be funny sometimes./neu@@Mr.Patrick_Hung
@@lewis123417it also travelled a lot after being blown down and stolen.
But Blue you missed the amazing part were Britain declared itself the centre of the world, with the times zones and trade. Also just the fact that this video is in English says a lot about the British Empire.
Not sure it actually went that way. Most trade maps had Greenwich as the Prime Meridian, and also the USA had set their time zone based on GMT. So an international conference thought it made sense
@@andyhemsted4570 True, yet it probably was decided it made sense due to the sheer power Britain had at the time. If a lot of the geopolitical world is based on what Britain does, best make the London area the "center of the world." It's that same reason that helps explain why most economies are based on the standard of the US Dollar. It made sense to do that because the USA had the most power when they changed from the Gold Standard, from physical to inferred value.
Red can you do a video on some Slavic mythology and god's? They aren't very well known but you might have fun. For example you can talk about Veles, Cernebog and Perun. You can also talk about creatures from vampires to vilas to multy headed dragon's named Lamija
This would be awesome. I know literally nothing.
I'd also very much like to know why that is that I haven't heard anything.
Yes fucking please! An OSP Slavic Mythology video is horribly overdue
We might as well get Blue to do the Balkan wars. Though I doubt anyone will survive to see the end of them.
@@5555petros if they do a video on that there would be a 3rd Balkan war in the comments
@@5555petros Sadly, that includes everything but the mountains themselves.
To be entirely honest, I would watch the four times as long version.
Edward Said once wrote:
"Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate."
I remember actually reading some quotes from a 1900’s parliamentary debate where several leftist politicians called out this excuse of ‘stopping slavery in savage nations’ (which we claimed to do once banning it ourselves)
Basically pointing out that this excuse would mean we’d be at war forever and the colonialists weren’t really that interested in the case in the first place.
They also pointed out that the public were basically unaware of how much money we were losing doing all this conquering and would be appalled to find out about how our forces were treating people abroad.
Because it really was a handful of greedy politicians wanting to take over these places and insisting to the public that it was a Very Good Thing
Not sure the Mongolians or Romans saw themselves as anything so altruistic.
@@mollymcdade4031
To be fair, atop all of that we DID put the Atlantic Slave Trade in the ground. We just did the same thing America did in Afghanistan and moved directly into political statecraft at the cost of lives and money.
@@Bushflare The Atlantic slave trade was mostly done in by the British Captains though. They were justifiably zealous despite getting slapped on the wrist regularly for going beyond what was technically legal. Eventually the politicians caved and let them do their thing (although knowing politicians, this was probably more because it harmed rival powers than altruism).
@@deathbower
This is true and condemnable but Britain was also the nation that put a stop to it. The Africans had been dealing in slaves internally for centuries and the Europeans just jumped into that trade and supercharged it. When the abolitionists gained enough power to overcome the greed Britain then went to war not with itself like America but with the nations that were the lynchpins of the slave trade.
A cynic would say this was because Britain was beyond the point where it benefitted from slavery and they’d probably be correct to some degree but as always history is rarely decided by a single factor and the strain of English Liberalism born on the isles was instrumental in the freeing of the slaves as well as the mostly peaceful dissolution of the Empire because England over time evolved to become very concerned with the concept of fairness and it was folks like Wilberforce and Gandhi who used their hearts and minds to make it impossible for the Emperor to continue without clothes.
The fascinating part of British history is how in spite of the evils inflicted and the damage done there is still so much virtue milling about within. The English really we’re convinced they were the good guys simply because they were rarely the *worst* guys. The internal contradictions are fascinating.
This channels ability to tackle serious topics with the level of severity they deserve yet still seamlessly move to lighter tones and less severe topics without any jarring shifts will always amaze me. 4:56 was so well done, it allowed enough for the horror and tragedy and deserved abhorrence to sink in without the topic or overall flow of the video being shifted off- focus. Red, Blue and Indigo always do such an amazing job.
I didn't like how he talked about Britains participation in slave trade, but he didn't mention that it was Britain who ended the Atlantic slave trade, and also the African and middle Eastern slave trade that had been going on for thousands of years
@@Juho221 You don't get to pat yourself on the back for that. It was the system Britain set up and profited off for generations.
"Napoleon's own hubris"
I mean, also Britain's infinite amount of cash which allowed them to pay the entirety of Europe to attack Napoleon. That had a small role.
Those attacks failed though. Napoleon just failed harder.
@@EcclesiastesLiker-py5ts well Britain’s cash and trade persuaded the Russians to stop the embargo which resulted in napoleons biggest defeat. The British were heavily involved in napoleons failure at the peninsular campaign which sapped resources and the British played the biggest role at Waterloo. So the British played an important role in all three of napoleons major downfalls.
@@maxdavis7722 Wow. Britain really does fight itself
@@OhitsONnow what?
@@OhitsONnow ?
Could you guys do something about the Isle of Mann? It's the first governmental body to give women the right to vote, has possibly the longest running parliament in the world, and with a fascinating blend of Gaelic and Norse culture.
That'd be so cool! I have some ancestry from there and I'd love to learn more!
Do they get a lot of jokes about their Mannish Women, or their hopes for Mannkind?
Iceland has the longest running parliament in the world, at least according to tradition.
@@minutemansam1214 I said possibly, and the Manx one is over 1000 years old
Edit: I checked both to make sure. I don't think there's any way to know which is older, since records would be pretty scarce from the 900's. But the Isle of Mann has some serious Nordic influence, so it's entirely possible they were founded around the same time.
and cats with no tails
“We will collapse your century old kingdom just to fund our tea addiction”
Some Brit boi in China probably
AND WE'LL GIVE YOU AN ADDICTION TOOOOOOOOOO🎶
The Qing were doing a pretty good job of collapsing already, tbh. Not China's greatest dynasty, the late Qing.
@@garethharold3600 I think theres a reason why the British were able to do what they did
@@trla6505 Well, and the Japanese, French, Russians, Germans, and so on. And a thousand different Chinese rebel groups.
Great Britain was stanning Genshin Impact before it was cool, because they were all about the Keqing Keqing Keqing.
I imagine Wales looking on the constant wars between England, Scotland and Ireland just like the dog in the burning house meme saying "this is fine"
Except when they covertly participated, of course.
If I don’t move they won’t notice me
Also Wales spent most of the first millennium fighting Rome, the Angelo Saxons and the Normans. There is a reason there are more castles in Wales per capita then anywhere else and it wasn't because the architecture was nice.
@@Arrek8585 although admittedly, the architecture IS nice. You should visit Caerphilly castle sometime. Pretty impressive
@@Arrek8585
It’s because Wales is Afghanistan with sheep. You need that many castles to govern that kind of terrain.
"George, the British Empire covers half the globe. While the German Empire covers a small sausage factory in Tanganita."
👏
I see you are a person of culture
“The poor old ostrich died for nothing”
The German empire actually wasn't too shabby either.
@@richiestyles5143 That's da joke.
In a side note, I love how enthusiastic is Blue in this videos you can tell how much he likes making them
50% of Britain's history is either connected with Tea or France
pretty sure we can easily stretch that to 100%
@@TauGDS Especially with hating France.
@@billcipherproductions1789 To be fair, everyone hates France. Even the french. (yes, I'm joking)
Or spices which, sadly, they declined to use on their cuisine.
luv tea
'ate france
simple as
"What's the opposite of tea?"
"YEET"
My sides hurt.
ah yes george washington in red face.
Aet.
@@georgethompson1460 it’s funny cause his names so southern English decent lol.
"List of British overseas territories"
This list is incomplete. You can help by *_expanding it_*
*[Rule Britannia intensifies]*
Nah mate. I'd rather we not meme supporting british colonialism.
Make jokes at the expense of empire, by all means. But jokes implying you support the british empire ironically, when too many people actually do, just aren't funny anymore.
The attitude of "rule britannia" is responsible for our violently racist immigration policies, for the shot in the foot of Brexit, for our current corrupt and incompetent leadership who have killed over 150,000 predominantly minoritised people with their mishandling of the coronavirus.
@@Minihood31770 Your bolshevism is showing.
@@Minihood31770
Cool idea but alternatively the Empire is fun and cool and Zulu is an awesome movie so like… nobody worth paying attention to gives a damn. The Empire is fine to enjoy.
@ do you know what Bolshevism is, or do you think whomever understands that your country or nation has done anything bad is somehow a totalitarian.
This comment has nothing to do with economics, or the amount of authority a governing body should have, Bloshevism isn't a term which should be used willy-nilly, this makes people assume a false meaning of the term, making your comment an anti-democratic misdemeanor.
Yours Sincerely,
a stranger on the internet.
@@ipadair7345 I do actually, specifically I said it in reference to how the commenter was suggesting people should be allowed to make jokes about Empire.
Totalitarian regimes, like the USSR, banned jokes. Quod erat demonstrandum... I'll let you work out the rest.
Yours (quite insincerely),
Tristan
The people that James sent to Ireland to "colonize" were the border reavers, who frequently made their living raiding across the border between Scotland and England. (The Scottish king James) shipped them off to Ireland so whatever trouble they habitually caused, wouldn't be trouble for a newly united Britain.
Im very proud of blue for delving so far into the age of vanity. I understand as a classicist it probably hurts his soul but as someone fascinated by this period it's wonderful to hear blue's take. After all its the period of history most relevant to formation of the modern world despite how convoluted it can be. Fantastic workas always!
The myths of the British Isles are very interesting. Most know of the Arthurian legends, but the Welsh tales in the Mabinogion and Irish sagas are very nice too. Aside from that it is very interesting to try to find out about pre-Christian religion in the Isles. Super cool stuffs
Red has complained in another video that pre-Christian Irish mythology is largely lost, due to having been heavily rewritten by Christian missionaries.
Arthurian legends are also Welsh for the most part, aside from the occassional additions the English and French made when they used it for their romantic periods
@@markchapman6800 The pre-Christian beliefs of the Anglo-Saxons are even more mysterious and equally interesting.
English myth is really complicated because we probably had a lot of original myths and legends but they’ve kind of been buried thanks to being conquered by the Romans and Vikings and taking on their myths.
There are celtic myths but again much like Irish myths a lot of them have been Christianised or erased over time. As for Anglo Saxon, its speculated Rome Assimilated some of their gods but because Rome has been sacked so many times we don't know which ones.
The oldest English original poem is Beowulf and it doesn't even take place in Britain.
If you’ve ever looked up how many countries Britain/England has invaded, you’ll find the answer to be “22 countries. All but 22 countries.”
And to be fair, many of those 22 only came about after Britain retired from the Empire Business to begin with. Had they existed beforehand they might not have been so lucky.
@@Bushflare Those god damn Mongolians just had to be landlocked
That can be changed...
That statisitc is kinda bullshit though because it uses a super loose definition of "invade"
I’m a Brit. This is 100x more simple and entertaining then history class.
I know right, but no, we need to know about the war of roses
@@KingFunky Exactly im in year 8. Going to year 9. Asked my teacher about it he said you learn it in year 10.
@Sean and when I was in eleventh grade in America, I had to learn about your colonization efforts as well as a bunch of other stuff America had no role in. What's your point? It's world history. There's more history you should know than what happened in your country
This was one of the most hilarious ones yet, thank you for the humorous breakdown.
...Like, dear gods though, at one point I paused and said to myself "This sounds like every game of civilization I've ever played" especially "Throw infinity money at every conflict to make it go away" XD
That and building a lot of settlers to claim as much land as you can, then conquering everyone close to you.
"Hey King George, what is the opposite of tea?"
"Y E E T"
You can hear Blue's laughter as he says that last word. I love it.
What's 'Yeet'
Blue: *finally makes a history summarized video on Britain*
Me: "this is where the fun begins"
British history:
Random sailor: Hey look at that piece of land over there!
Britannia: Anyways so then I started conquering…..
“If a flag isn’t waving, it’s ripe for enslaving!”
-every European monarch ever
What's this?
Your golden statue of a deer?
It'll look lovely in a museum
@@afflict9341 ok then lol
no its anyway so i started colonizing
Or rather
Sailor: Hey look land!
Highly Decorated Military General: Well we should definitely go and take all the stuff- I mean liberate them
Sailor: What?
General: What?
Britain will be like “Is anyone else gonna claim this land for themselves?” and not wait for an answer.
“Whatever that language is I don’t speak it so this land is mine now.”
“I’m Irish, ya cunt!”
Interestingly enough Britian, for much of the history if its empire, wasnt looking for land for its own sake. It only really cared about controlling strategic coast lines and making others trade on good terms with us. It refused requests to join the empire. This does change during the scramble for africa as fear of other's taking the land made Britiajntake land itself
"Anybodywantthisnokthanksi'lltakeitbyyyyeeeeee!"
@@internetenjoyer1044 Exactly, Mexico, Uruguay and Ethiopia wanted to join the empire but the British didn't let them. Britain also protected south American countries, because after the fall of spanish rule there the US and other European powers wanted to colonise it
Every time I look at British history it always shocks me just how powerful we were
Look at modern America and the crippled, collapsing giant it has become. Power That great is too heavy for any structure to bear for too long. The wheel of history turns and those at the top eventually find themselves crushed beneath the bottom.
You mean power to destroy
@@jamieyoung9206 and to create. remember that many coutnries were clammering to join the British empire; it couldnt have existed without bringing benefits to people
@@jamieyoung9206 You have a child's understanding of history. I suggest you grow up.
@@internetenjoyer1044 are you refering to places like malta
This is as fair and accurate as a blind person with one arm using a bow and arrow. But I respect the effort to condense it into 12 mins is an enormous challenge. A very American perspective on British History.
Can we please acknowledge the absolute SAVAGERY of the phrase “Rinse, repeating, buy more slaves”?!?! I am blown away! Keep up the good work Blue!
So so true 😃
then that raises the question, who was selling them?
Also, the British ended the slave trade (as part of the slavery abolition act of 1833)
@@DCPTF2 oh ffs not that argument again. The people that sold the slaves to the british had a very differrent idea of what slavery was. (nonetheless still cruel). A kind of indentured servitude, where you could be set free, staring to see the differences. these african slavers would've not sold them if they knew what would happen to them
@@roberthall7689
The Atlantic Slave Trade
Slavery continued on the far coast of Africa and proliferates within many places in Africa even today. But the Atlantic one is the only slave trade people seem concerned with.
it could have easily been 20 videos, but thats gotta be the world record speedrun for british history. good stuff as always!
Monarch: Mummy Daddy
Military: Yes honey?
Monarch: I want that toy!
Military: But you already have plenty of toys.
Monarch: I know, but I want it, PLEASEEEE!
Military: Ok dear.
Great Britain/England as Willy Wonka's Veruca Salt oddly fits??
The Opium Wars is an under appreciated part of British history that plays a greatly understated role in current events in regards to how China handles itself.
“Rinse, repeat, buy more slaves” is straight out of a CGP Grey video and I love it (the writing, not the slave trade)
I started my B.A in History about the time I found this channel and it’s been very nice to these videos as stepping stones to work off of. Entertaining in their own right they’ve helped me slog through so much research. Thank you ❤️
Videos like this are good because it reminds people that nations are moved by powerful individuals rather than the nation as a whole deciding to invade somewhere or whatever. It's always a king, politician or industrialist (all three working together), in an attempt to increase personal power, never the everyday man. A factory worker in London was hardly dictating the actions of the elites, but simply serving the expansion of power through necessity for work.
A nation can stand up against powerful individuals, you know.
@@TheSolarWolf revolutions against regimes tends to be lead by people from the elite class rather than a member of the underclass. Regardless, my point being that 97% of the British people had very little say on the actions of its leaders. They weren't asked if they wanted to participate in slavery or empire building or industrialisation, they were events that happened to and around them. Understanding history we can see that rather than blaming entire ethnic groups we should recognise the recurring behaviors of unaccountable leaders.
Honestly appreciate the philosophy of who should own what? That ran through this episode, it's so key in Britain right now and for humanity in general. The sooner we realise that we all own everything the better.
"I know why the sun never sets on the British Empire: God wouldn't trust an Englishman in the dark."
Especially with a sheep
@Sean oof
@@jamesharding3459 that's the Welsh you're thinking off
'The Second Hundred Years War'
...I never thought about it that way, but damn it you're not wrong. Neat.
Any other country has a navy
The British empire “your gonna regret that”
It's Athens all over again.
And then some people from mainland Europe sailed up the Thames to steal the flagship and block the harbour. Fun times
@@dmen89 only once
@@dantecruz9463 once was all it took to utterly humiliate the English Navy
British ia preety gay ngl
I'm honestly surprised you didn't summise it down to "pissing off our neighbours for several centuries" as that fairly aptly describes our history.
British history is best summarised thusly: Being invaded repeatedly until they go super saiyan and take over the world.
@@HivefleetMagoladon which can also somewhat fit into the History of America.
@@AnInsaneOstrich Until we decided that eating McFatnolds and watching Netflix for all time was better than building a glorious future for the world. The Cold War sucked, but it got us a man on the moon. What had the 21st century gotten us, besides a nation on the verge of civil war and political, economic, and demographic collapse?
@@jamesharding3459 I'm fairly certain a man on the moon is not worth being on the verge of total atomic annihilation. We are still making technological and medical advances, even today. Think about what technology was like in the year 2000 and think about what it is like now. We have self driving cars, vastly more advanced phones and computers, even better rocket technology for reaching the moon and other parts of out solar system.
@@AnInsaneOstrich It was more a gripe at the downward spiral of the US than praising the Cold War. Having 10,000-odd nukes pointed our way was less than fun, according to everyone I know who’s old enough to remember it.
“Hey, King George! What’s the opposite of tea? *YEET!* “
Legendary.
I will be honest as a Englishman I tend to take a 'Warts and all' approach to our history. The good, the bad and the ugly. I laud our successes, criticise our failures and try to learn from the dark underbelly which was a part of it to not make the same mistakes twice. For all the great (not necessarily good) things the empire did it cannot be separated from all the flaws. Britain is a model on which many nations got their infrastructure, sports, even good portions of systems of governments - but at the same time the cost that was to local people and cultures.
I bring this up namely because this is a big part of the British consciousness, that being our pride in Empire while also accepting what it did.
I am neither attempting to start a argument on the nature of Empire, but more provide a current perception of British culture on Empire that is not the chest pounding of 'Empire good' or the attitude of 'empire bad.'
Interestingly the erasure of the Scottish clan system wasn’t actually done by the English specifically (though people still blame us) but rather Scottish nobles who wanted to exert more control over their lands in the highlands. Which is another example of the Scottish hurting themselves and then blaming it on England
I feel like you should have clarified the Puritanism of the English Parliament during the English civil war and wars of the 3 kingdoms. You make it seem like the Scottish turned on the English after Charles was executed, but in actuality after the first English civil war the Scots changed sides due to a secret deal with Charles, thus why Charles the second lead 2 more civil wars
if one thing is true we brits like its making everything overly complex.
"Hey, King George, what's the opposite of tea? YEET!" is hand down the best example of modern language enabling *pure gold* historical humor that would have made absolutely zero sense at the time. Well done, Blue. 🤣🤣
I left college a while ago, yet OSP more-or-less keeps taking me back to school. And I love them for it.
i think one of the reasons why we dunk so hard on the British Empire is because it is still fairly _recent_ . other empires are _old_ in comparison, which gives us a level of distance we don't have with the British empire.
mind you, i'm not trying to justify or defend what Britain did when they decided to go sicko mode and exploit countries and people for financial gain, but this isn't unique to the British Empire. and i think the reason why we think of the BE as "the villain" is because their actions are still fresh in our memory and we still feel the trickle down of their actions today.
what i'm trying to get at is that history is complex and it's a big disservice to paint everything as black or white when most of history is in the grey zone.
The British Empire is the villain according to who? They spread enlightenment values more than any other single political entity. India today is a British style democracy. They were certainly not a democracy before the British got there.
I agree. Nobody weeps for the Gaulish tribal life destroyed by the Romans anymore
@Tolstoy111 Also saved countless historic artifacts. Islamic states in particular destroy history.
@@Tolstoy111Ireland
I have been waiting for a true OSP history video for 4 weeks!
Britain- Seeing Spain colonizing “Ok, my turn”
America seening Britain colonizing “right that down, right that down!”
I see I have made a spell error but I don’t care
I thought you were just using some variant American spelling 😉
"When I was a lad, a quarter of the world map was colored in red, and that was the British Empire."
"Now it's just all the people we owe money to."
we dont plan to pay
@@JGV-x2o we actually already do pay? we have paid them for years, every ex British colonies economy grew massively under British control.
I didn’t know that thanks for the info also it was a joke I know next to nothing about politics and such
@@v_cpt-phasma_v689 I don't think the same could be said for Syria and Iraq after we left them with lovely straight lined borders that made no cultural sense. I'm a patriotic brit but we were terrible at drawing borders
@@lewis123417 oh yeah but thats because our plan behind borders wasnt based on ethnic regions, our borders were planned around allied tribal leaders/governers and we gave them whatever territory they wanted, to do it based on ethnic regions would have meant lots of smaller nations that probably wouldve ended up fighting eachother anyway.
I really appreciate you going all the way up to the New Millennium. I have a terrible bias that "History" and the perceived antiquated ideas of Empire somehow end after WWII. It doesn't. It is all alive and well, albeit with different tools and rhetoric. Britain has a huge gravity in the events of history and I am not only impressed with how much I learned but that I learned it in ~12 minutes. Nice.
I dont know, imperialism took on such a different form after the post-WW2 revolutions that I’m not sure imperialism is even the right word for it anymore. There’s no other word for it though.
Yeah you only have to look at how to communist party of China is getting third world countries into debt traps. That's true communist imperialism
Some further suggested readings to try unpack the world's largest empire.
Empire by Niall Ferguson is a great look at the good, bad and the ugly of the empire from its inception as funder of piracy to its collapse as basically a vassal of its bastard child.
The Pax Britannica Series by Jan Morris is an excellent look at what life was like across the British Empire in the 19th and early 20th century. Very good books! Explains a lot about the ideology behind British imperialism.
And a History of the English People by Paul Johnson is also really good, especially for explaining the foundations of the early empire.
I enjoyed this video! Impartial and insightful. But I also think it's important to create a distinction between pre and post-Victoria Britain. Britain before Victoria was very much a profit-driven empire that didn't even acknowledge its own imperial nature, while it was Victoria's era that really started developing the British idea of what their empire meant to themselves and the world. Also, would have liked a mention of Britain's instrumental role in the abolition of the slave trade.
Me, reading the title: Oh boy, here we go
Blue, immediately : Oh boy, here we go
Hey, talking about evictions in Scotland and Ireland, don't forget the English were thrown off their lands too through enclosure. Feel like England is getting all the blame here.... WE DIDN'T ASK TO BE A UNION!! (true, it was a Scottish king who inherited the English throne that forced us to unite despite the English parliament not wanting to).
@J I would go even further. I quite like the idea of a decentralised union of self governing local microstates and city states..
Blue: What’s the opposite of tea? Yeet!
Me: *dies from laughter*
Blue: I will not mourn the British Empire but I will mourn Hong Kong
Me: *is crying inside*
- A Hong Konger
Glory to HK, the mainland imperialists will never conquer us
ngl as a British person studying British history... this was really good! you got all the important beats and talked about the important stuff as well as stuff non-British people don't always understand like the culture-mix and the very heavy effect that the empire/dissolution has on modern-day Britain. I really enjoyed it!
Really glad I was able to help on this Blue!
Britain: sees any land mass” is for me?”
6:06 - I love this joke. For a moment it felt like Blue turned into GrayStillPlays.
Favourite piece: The invention of popular sovereignity by a parliament just deciding its boss now (while kinda being laughably transparent power realpoliticians at the same time).
Just started a modern British history (1688-now) class earlier this week. This couldn’t have come at a better time
EFFIN' YES!!! _SOURCES IN THE DESCRIPTIOOOOON!!!_
Yo, quick point of clarification from an irishman because its admittedly confusing. 1922 was the formation of the Irish Free State which was technically still a dominion of Britain. It wasn't until the late 30's that the Irish government wrote their own new constitution and affirmed themselves as an independent nation, the Republic of Ireland, and by then war with the Third Reich was looming and Britain had bigger fish to fry so they let it go
I thought so. Most folks tend to think of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and maybe sometimes South Africa when they think of the dominions because they spent ages as dominions (and featured in the WW1 propaganda art with the lion and its cubs) but there were quite a few other dominions that had shorter time periods as dominions (Ireland, India, Pakistan, Ceylon, I'm sure I'm forgetting a few). Dominion's really just the most autonomous form of British colony, really.
Me: How did Britain begin?
OSP: Allow us to introduce ourselves
Me : *Long have I waited for this*
6:15 Oh thanks Blue. I literally just finished watching "the rose of Versailles" I'm really not in the mood for more french revolution
Of all your videos on the Isles, I can say this one is my favourite. You hit that great sweet spot in a historical video few can achieve; the appreciation of achievements, innovation and even conquest, tempered by the horrors of reality.
The whole sense of belonging in Britain is honestly very contested with nearly noone feeling like they live as a British citizen, thank you for drawing attention to this, I hope it changes in the future
The white Britons feel ignored because of the modern attempts to import and champion the minorities. The minorities feel ignored because the people championing them want them to feel different.
The problem will only change when people decide on what it means to be a Briton culturally. Not a White, Black, Brown, etc. Briton, but that’s the conversation we’re having right now. Eternal grievance politics. A battle to the bottom of greatest victimhood. There is no way to build anything from a mentality that only cares to break things apart.
Such a waste…
@@Bushflare Its a horrid mess, one that could only start to be healed by everyone taking a step back and talking.
You speak very well, gives me hope
@@katainj9861
It’ll be a while yet before folks like me get a word in to the conversation. If history is any indicator (and when has it not been) we’ve got 10-20 years of Longform civilisational collapse beginning to unfold ahead of us and the decisions we all take about what we want to look like coming out of that are going to be pivotal.
The enlightenment era is more or less at it’s logical conclusion. Individualism has destroyed everything important in life and manifested in critical theory which is being wielded like a torch in a proverbial Library of Alexandria. This is as far as these ideologies can take us and we can only hope the slingshot backwards doesn’t end up sending us somewhere more dire than where we currently stand.
"Hey, King George, what's the opposite of tea?" *YEET*
I don't know what, but this little bit had me giggling fiercely and patriotically.
10:45 My parents were born in British Hong Kong. Although the first 15 years post-handover were the golden age of HK, it was sadly and inevitably going to come to an end sooner or later. Really appreciate that how it was back then was mentioned in the video!
6:00
I choked on my drink so much I needed a minute to breathe.
I love how wide reaching and evenly spread this is, really reads different when you see just how quickly we went from, Revolution to World War in the grand scheme of things is pretty wild.
It really did all happen very quickly.
I would love a video that takes a little longer to focus on the more interesting things that came out of the British empire. Obviously, as everyone knows, there was a lot going on that wasn't cool, but the little good that did come of it is fascinating
That would be a horrible choice because the horrible far far outweighed any remote good. And any video that wants to accurately cover it can not ever present it like they were remotely equal amounts.
The British empire was a deeply evil construct, and anyone with integrity needs to tonally convey that accurately.
@@lizardlegend42 So it's horrible to teach historical facts? I'm not advocating for empire, or suggesting historical revisionism. Life is more complicated than "there is bad and good, and only evil things happen as a result of bad actions". Do you also thing we should not tell people about the airplanes they use benefitting from world war 2? Or radio technology they use to watch online videos?
“Hey King George! What’s the opposite of tea? Y E E T” Pls help I’m deader than the British empire
Well you can’t entirely blame Britain for how partition turned out the way it did. The leadership of AIML was quite insistent that it would happen. Often sowing violence between Muslims and Hindus to counter any notions of one united india.
How could that possibly backfire?
*Pakistan spends 20 years funding and providing logistical support and shelter to the Taliban*
Yes, that is the version that Indians like to push forward, but the story has a bit more nuance than that. A more complete story is one of Muslim political leaders first trying to work with and within the Indian Congress, coming face to face with the very real and very strong strains of Hindu-supremacy in that party and growing generally in society (which have metastasized as the RSS supported Fascist BJP government today), and deciding that in light of this there was no future for Muslims in independent India.
That is the trajectory that Jinnah himself followed - Indian narratives which seek to paint him as a power-hungary fanatic who used religion to divide the country ignore the reality that he started his political career in the Congress party and tried to work towards a future of cooperation between Hindus and Muslims. His experiences there, however, eventually convinced him that indepdence was the only option.
Its a complicated story.
Watching from Hong Kong and man I'm glad you mentioned us 🥺
We're maybe the only city (not country because the "motherland" would have my head) that flourished as a colony.
How much do yall miss the Brits compared to the Hundred Acre Wood takeover
@@mrmacguff1n I fully recognise that the Hundred Acre Wood takeover (nice one) is also a form of colonialism, but I would rather have the British kind of coloniser. (Would talk about independence but it's literally illegal to talk it at all)
@@wanderinglizzy Jeez, that sucks. I hope that aspect changes in your lifetime
@@mintbrownieangelfish-6114 Thank you. It's only just become like this in the last two years. Hope I'll live to see more change (the good kind), but I think it'll get worse before it can get better.
I would like to be on record both as saying you are a madman for taking on all of this in one video and that you did a shockingly complete job for so little time.
Visuals in this video are a chef's kiss
Incredibly well made Blue!
With Hong Kong, Britain wasn’t really give much choice. Much of the city was on land officially leased from China. The PRC made it very clear that if Britain wouldn’t give it back, they’d take it back.
Always so excited to see new OSP content! The follies of British geopolitics rly make me wish the American school system had focused on it more.
Alright, time to use my knowledge of lostbelt 6 and see how much I know.
This is a great video. The British Empire was shorter than most but was off the charts in terms of widespread cultural impact. It shaped the modern world but the cost was (and continues to be) staggering. As long as everyone keeps trying to fix what is wrong we should be mostly OK in the long run, maybe I hope perhaps? I tell myself that the long arc of history is one of slow steady cultural progressivism but in the span of any one person's lifetime things can get really crazy. This was a really thought provoking video, thanks Blue!
a phrase i always kind of liked with the Britsh empire was that it "Was Wom in a fit of absentmendiness" meant to reflect the lack of overall central control of the policy of imperal aquisition