Most dominant European colonial empire

Most dominant Empire?

  • Spanish

    Votes: 12 14.6%
  • French

    Votes: 2 2.4%
  • British

    Votes: 68 82.9%

  • Total voters
    82
Which one of the three major European colonial empires achieved the most dominance in history in your opinion?
 

Delvestius

Banned
I picked Spain; British Imperialism focused a lot more on cooperating with local polities and had other industrial powers to contend with.

Spain had more or less absolute control over her colonies and went unrivaled for a time.

The scale of British control was greater, but the scope of Spanish control was greater than the British.
 
I picked Spain; British Imperialism focused a lot more on cooperating with local polities and had other industrial powers to contend with.

Spain had more or less absolute control over her colonies and went unrivaled for a time.

The scale of British control was greater, but the scope of Spanish control was greater than the British.

I agree, British control was more extensive and therefore their empire was more dominant (taking the whole globe into account), especially including their influence outside the empire during the Pax Britannica, but Spanish control was much deeper. Most of the former Spanish Empire is still basically culturally Spanish even today after all. I think I'll go with Britain though.
 
I voted Britain, mainly because they (in my opinion) decolonized with much more control than the Spanish. Also, the British economy was much much more influential, at least at the advent of its empire, than the Spanish one was (other than flooding the market with silver and killing the Fuggers), and the Spanish Empire gradually brought Spain into the position of a pawn rather than that of a player which Britain obtained.
 
I vote for Britain. I'd argue that the nature of Spanish central government meant that it was quite difficult to convert the Empire's control into dominance, especially beyond the Empire's borders. The failure of Spain to manage the European situation during Charles V and Philip II despite its overwhelming resources (Dutch revolt, Spanish Armada) compared with everybody else doesn't exactly smack of dominance.

And while it's not exactly fair to compare the two time periods, the British Empire was much more vigorous in defending their interests in far-off East Asia (Opium Wars) than Spain was (for example, with response to Japanese Sakoku).
 
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Butterflies mean Spain wins this by default. Of course, by the same logic, the most influential empire must have been the first thing we referred to as such. Sargon of Akkad?
 
Butterflies mean Spain wins this by default. Of course, by the same logic, the most influential empire must have been the first thing we referred to as such. Sargon of Akkad?


Meh, I don't know if this is the most effective method of determining the most "dominant".
Maybe by language? I don't know if that's the best either though.


(1200 million English speakers
530 million Spanish speakers
274 million French speakers)
 
Meh, I don't know if this is the most effective method of determining the most "dominant".
Maybe by language? I don't know if that's the best either though.


(1200 million English speakers
530 million Spanish speakers
274 million French speakers)

If we are going to by first lanuage spoken, Spanish actually leads over English and French.
 
Meh, I don't know if this is the most effective method of determining the most "dominant".
Maybe by language? I don't know if that's the best either though.

I was parodying half the posts we get in any "most influential battle" threads, which devolve into discussion of Ugg caving in Ogg's skull with a rock, or something like that.
 
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