DBWI: What was the defining moment in the fall of the British Empire?

In your opinion, what point marked the beginning of the end before the collapse of the British Empire? Not the death throes, of course, but the event(s) that eventually led to them.
 
The assassination of Queen Victoria in 1887 - especially when it was discovered in the aftermath that her own son, the Prince of Wales, was the the ringleader behind her murder, so he could gain the Throne as he had grown impatient waiting for his turn.
 
I'd definitely say the bloody stalemate in the fields of France and Belgium. The British (and the French) put everything they had into that final push in 1919, but the new tactics they hoped to exploit with their tanks just weren't enough. I think, though I'm not sure about the exact figure, they got twenty miles at the furthest point along the offensive? At that bridge over the Escaut where something like 100,000 Entente troops dug in and ultimately got surrounded by the returning Germans.

That battle in particular might, in a way, be the turning point. I know what people say, how the Germans, at this point, where just as lost, that they couldn't sustain any sort of offensive without a rebellion at home, and I actually kind of agree with that opinion. The subsequent peace was a little slanted towards Germany, though, not that I'm the kind of person who believes those tiny reparations the British payed the Germans had anything to do with what happened later.

After the war ended so indecisively (but the public took it as a loss, which was important), the Imperial economy was in shambles. Britain herself was nearly insolvent, bankrupt, India and half of Africa was up in arms to various degrees, the Dominions were making some pretty unsatisfactory noises, the whole thing was a mess through the 20's.

Then came 1927, when the Depression hit...
 
Well the fact that America cut off ties with Britain after finding out that the British had more or less let German u-boats sink American shipping in the hopes of drawing America into the war, sure didn't help. Top that off with then America going and supporting the Irish, and well you have yourself a dandy of a problem.
 
When Winston Churchill, who came from a prominent British Family, emigrated to the US, and went to work for the US government against the British Empire.
 
Doh! I forgot about Churchill, damn fine leader he was, too bad they didn't amend the constitution in time to allow him to run for President. But our best Secretary of State by far.
 
The 'Violent Peace' was certainly the biggest factor in its weakening. King Albert was a fool to think the conquests of Isthmian America, the Indochinese Archipelago and Southern Africa could be followed by an abrupt and indefinite peace, with no scaling back of armed forces and no attempt to anglicise conquered areas. Add to that the three uprisings in British Asia, the botched attempts to turn Mexico, Belgium, Portugal and the Netherlands into various shades of vassal state and Parliament bowing to Albert's heinous contempt for it and it's a miracle the Empire made it to the '30s.
 
The Latin American experiments were particularly disgraceful, it was as though Britain though that the dominon of Buenos Aires would be the rule rather than the exception.
 
I've got to say, when those Aliens landed in 1940 in British Trioplitania, and the army was sent in to stop them, and it turned out they looked like Female Galmour models it was just the most embarassing thing ever. I can still hear the screams that happened as a result of the mass rape. Did they not realise it was on Radio!?

Of course, the Internet's invention in 1967 provided some aid, and the fact that the Nationalised Computer Protection and Defense agency stopped the Pesky Mexicans getting our Internet, raised a bit of pride up.

Of course, You speak as if we don't have an Empire any more. We still have some decent territories, Hong Kong for example. And India, I remember when the referenda results come through, who would have thought it? 90% in favour of staying in the Empire! Wowza.
 
When Winston Churchill, who came from a prominent British Family, emigrated to the US, and went to work for the US government against the British Empire.
True. Remind me if I'm wrong, but didn't his mother insist on raising him in the US after a point because of the treatment he was getting in the company of other social elites because he was "corrupted" with the American part? Well, their loss our gain. Good man, great handling of the Germano-American diplomatic crisis of the age.

This ain't the ASB section, dear heart. You can go back to your brit-wanking fanasies in private now.
 
True. Remind me if I'm wrong, but didn't his mother insist on raising him in the US after a point because of the treatment he was getting in the company of other social elites because he was "corrupted" with the American part? Well, their loss our gain. Good man, great handling of the Germano-American diplomatic crisis of the age.
Indeed Indeed, I fear had he not successfully negotiated the Treaty of Trier with the 2nd HREGN and that cooler heads had not prevailed in Vienna, we would have been locked in a continued arms race with Imperial Germany. Unfortunely, for Britain, without America and Germany at each other's throats anymore they could both turn their attention to their mutal enemy.
 
This ain't the ASB section, dear heart. You can go back to your brit-wanking fanasies in private now.

Say what you will, but I lived through the Scottish War of Independance, and that was horrific. When they took Newcastle and the Government Nuked just to score a tactical victory... *shudders*
 
Say what you will, but I lived through the Scottish War of Independance, and that was horrific. When they took Newcastle and the Government Nuked just to score a tactical victory... *shudders*

Oh great, another wackie-jacked recent. :rolleyes:

OOC: Translation: hyped-up n00b.
 
Well, for me it would have to be the formation of the Republican Movement under Ramsay Macdonald in 1925, and the subsequent launch of the 1926 General Strike, which crippled the economy for 16 days. If anything, the provision of a political movement dedicated to the elimination of the monarchy, and the call for universal sufferage served to create a movement that was both broad in its scope, and rooted in the industrial environment of the period....
 
The stalemate in the Boer War was the catalyst I think. Some say without French, Russian and German support, the Boers wouldn't have kept the British out of the Transvaal and Free State, and the war would have ended in British victory, rather than the draw that it was. I think this was the moment that the British realised world opinion was turning aginst them, and their expansionism.

And imagine if a guy like Jan Smuts had been on the British side, rather than on the Nazi side in WWII. And that's not ASBs, if the British had won the Boer War, they would probably have had the resources of the Boer Republics to call on in both World Wars.
 
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