Was Britains rise as a superpower inevitable?

Elfwine

RGB, what good - for Britain's power as in its own right instead of being a resource-rich province of someone else - it have done to have those deposits without the human factors?
 

RGB

Elfwine said:
RGB, what good - for Britain's power as in its own right instead of being a resource-rich province of someone else - it have done to have those deposits without the human factors?
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You could have all the human factors in the world and end up being Denmark or Netherlands at best if you don't have the resources and the isolation.

The combination is what's important. It's hard to compare to anything else directly because nowhere else can you find that combination.
 
Nassirisimo

Nassirisimo

Plumber said:
No, because Britain was never a superpower.
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I have to agree with this. While Britain was the only world power for a while, when it came to European politics, they were only one of the Great Powers. And indeed, not one that paticularly stood out in terms of its land power. Calling Britain a superpower would imply that they were in a league of their own, which is true only if you discount Europe. Which would be folly.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Sevarics said:
I know this is a little off topic, but would this actually be possible? If so, would Dutch just become the official German language? Or would they adopt the actual German language?
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I can't give you the POD, but I am sure i can be done. They were a part of the HRE, and you just need to keep them in the HRE. And I guess Dutch or something like it would be the language of Protestant Germany.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
Elfwine said:
I would like to see a source for that (the debt part) and why Britain seems to have borne it so easily.

Yes, easily. Britain shows no signs of being nearly broke or exhausted in this period, quite the contrary.

I know (source: Kennedy) that Britain spend 1.6 billion on the Napelonic wars - and "total income" covered 73.4% of that, despite the amount spent in total being two and a half times the amount spent on the other major wars between 1688 and 1783, which means the amount raised by loans was not quite twice the amount having to be rasied for the other five wars in question where as total income is three times the amount in question.

In short, Britain had an easier time funding the war outside of loans than ever before, even if the figure in question looks enormous.
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http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_national_debt_chart.html

Now yes they did make the interest payments, but the overall debt was very high. And if the interest rates spiked for any reason, the UK would not be able to repay the debt. Another source I had showed a much slower repayment from 1820 to 1840, probably reflecting differing estimates of GDP. The UK paid 1/2 to 1/3 of France interest rates is a big reason they did ok. Also the industrial revolution and about 100 years of peace did the rest. The Crimean war was not really that big or that long compared to the Napoleonic Wars or WW1.

And there is evidence of financial stress in the devaluation of the pound in about 1812. There is a reason it is the "pound sterling" or 92.5% of a pound of silver not a "pound". If the Napoleonic wars had lasted longer, then the UK would start to see a series of devaluation such as we see in France, Russia or Italy. They took the economy to the edge, without quite going over the edge. This is why I said another major war with the like of the USA or Russia would have crippled them. Just add on say the cost of fielding a 3 million to 5 million man army for 4-5 years in a "victorious" war over Russia. It would have broken the back of the British Empire, much like WW1 or WW2 would have. The UK in 1910 (35% Debt to GDP) was much stronger than the UK in 1830 (180% Debt to GDP). Or put another way, just imagine the UK had been less frugal between the Napoleonic Wars and WW1, so it entered with a debt of 100% of GDP. It would have run out of money to buy things in the USA at least a year earlier and lost the war, all other things being equal.

The key to understand the UK success is spending just enough to keep others from challenging it, but as little as possible on the RN and British Army from 1820-1890. As soon as we see the Boer War and the German Naval expansion, we see the UK have to leave splendid isolationism not out of choice, but out of necessity. It sounds nice to say we are going to have 1.6 to 2.0 times the Navy of Germany, but that alone largely eats the entire military budget. To have an continental size army would have broken the budget, not to mention cause severe internal political issues.

Part of the reason the USA golden age will not last 100 years and the UK lasted 100 years is the USA was not able to find the right balance that would keep our interest safe without spending so much on the military and wars like Vietnam, Korea, and Iraq.
 

Socrates

While I don't want to go for full geographic determinism, it's worth bearing in mind that a lot of the "human factors" come down to having a constitutionalist system, which you could argue came, at least in part, from geographic factors. Being an island nation meant there was a much larger chance for a mercantile class to grow, and the bigger the mercantile class, the less relative power the monarchy/aristocracy has.
 

scholar

Banned
Great Britain was never even in a relatively good position to become a major power at its inception, and relied on the turn of events as well as several lucky streaks in lucky times in order to climb to where they were.
 
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