The Fall of the British Empire

[DanaC]

I was wandering about on the BBC website and came across this rather interesting guide to how Britain lost her empire.

The power and influence of the British Empire once held its grip on the four corners of the globe. Over hundreds of years Britain gradually expanded its reach in a seemingly never-ending rise to total control. In the 20th Century, however, everything changed. In a matter of decades, this gigantic structure utterly collapsed and left a controversial legacy in its wake.


At its height this was the first genuinely global empire. At various points the British Empire controlled Canada and her dominions in the north, huge swathes of Africa in the south, Australia and New Zealand to the east and the American colonies to the west.


How and why could an empire so vast come crashing to the ground so quickly?

It's broken down into the various stages. Really informative.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zcnmtfr

I knew the empire was huge, I didn't know that at it's zenith in the early 1920s it encompassed 458 million people. A quarter of the world's population. That's fucking ridiculous.