The sun never sets on the British Empire. During Britain’s heyday, this was absolutely true. They
controlled territory in practically every corner of the planet, and throughout its history, Britain
was able to invade 90% of the countries around the world. The craziest part is how they did it. No
other country in history, or the present day for that matter, has managed to exert its influence
like the British did. From pursuing lucrative business opportunities, to doing unspeakable
things to the peoples of other countries, Britain was able to exert its will far and wide.
To be clear, England does not currently have troops in 90% of the world, and it never did
at any one specific point in time. We’re talking about the time period between the 16th and early
20th centuries when the British Empire was forming. Britain invaded, plundered, and
profited from all but 22 countries throughout this part of history. Think about how crazy that is.
But how did they do it? How could one tiny island off the coast of Europe become so powerful?
You probably learned about some of the reasons in history class, but others will shock you.
There were a lot of ups and downs for the British Empire, but by 1913 Britain controlled,
or exerted some type of power over around 23 percent of the entire world’s population.
This means that almost 1 out of every 4 people on the entire planet were affected
by Britain in some way during this time. However, this is nothing compared to the
amount of land and people that were invaded by the British throughout the country's history.
So, how did we get here? How did the British become so powerful?
Surprisingly the country got off to a slow start.
At the beginning of European colonialism, Britain actually started much further behind than many
other countries. Portugal, Spain, Holland, and France all had an early advantage in exploration,
but that all changed due to a little luck and a series of well-planned decisions for Britain.
Most of the changes that allowed Britain to thrive had to do with economic policies
and the amount of money they put into their Navy and their trade ship fleet.
An invasion does not necessarily have to be ordered by the British crown.
In fact, many of the countries that came into contact with the British did not
face British soldiers sent by the Crown but private armies and mercenaries hired
by businessmen. The British government was responsible for some of the invasion forces,
but it was business and enterprise that really led the charge for British dominance across the world.
Once a British company set up a venture abroad, the Crown would offer some protection
and oversight if needed, but most of the time, businesses were allowed to do as they pleased
with the lands they conquered. Sometimes private companies would even take land that Britain had
no interest in, which would end up growing the Empire even further. This would still count as
Britain invading that country. Just because the government was not the one doing the invading
didn’t mean a place and its people wouldn't eventually be under British control in some form.
This brings us to one of the main ways that Britain was able to spread its influence
around the planet. For many years they had the largest and most powerful Navy in the world.
The British put a ton of resources and manpower into building up their Navy and creating the most
state-of-the-art ships of the time. However, their success on the seas was not just due to
their feats of engineering but to some luck as well. The country's location allows it to
enjoy the prevailing westerly winds, which means their ships sit “upwind” of the rest of Europe;
this was a huge advantage when ships had sails and required wind power to move. England also had
natural and manmade ports that rivaled anything in the rest of Europe and allowed for easy access
to offload goods into the country and launch ships quickly and efficiently into the Atlantic.
Another advantage was that England had large quantities of coal, iron, and,
most importantly for their Navy, oak for building sturdy ships. What is important to keep in mind
about these resources is that since they were finite, the need to conquer more land and gather
more resources to fuel the British Empire was a necessity. Later, we will examine how the limited
resources did not hinder Britain but made it stronger as they set off to invade the world.
At certain points in history, people believed that the success of the British
Navy and the Empire itself was ingrained in the genes of the British people. However,
this was not the case. The British government wanted to expand its sphere of influence badly.
And as an island nation, they knew they needed to control the oceans to do this.
So, the British government did what they thought was best to gain superiority:
they spent a lot of money to ensure they had the best fleet of ships in the world.
There was nothing special about British shipbuilders or workers compared to other
parts of the world. It was actually their willingness to spend massive quantities
of money on their Navy and other ships that allowed them to eventually surpass
other European countries as the dominant presence in the oceans.
A strong Navy with lots of ships was advantageous for many reasons. One reason, of course,
was for national defense. This was especially important since England was an island just
across the channel from a number of aggressive neighbors. France and England had an on-again,
off-again relationship when it came to war. The stronger the British Navy was,
the better they were able to keep enemies away from their shores and their merchant ships safe.
However, for many on the British Isles during the 1700s, having a lot of well-built ships
wasn’t just important for the defense, but it was the best way to make money.
One main difference between the ships in England and the rest of Europe was that
there was a constant stream of vessels always in the works. It was not uncommon
for rulers of other countries to wax and wane between building large numbers of
ships for their navy and focusing their attention on other matters.
For England, this never happened. To stop building ships was not an
option. Every aspect of governmental policy and the economy was contingent
on Britain having large fleets of ships that could travel across the empire.
This was one key component that allowed them to invade 90% of the world. At the time,
there was no air travel. To get from one part of the world to another, you had to take a boat.
Britain never lost sight of this fact and made sure their shipbuilders didn’t either.
There is no doubt that the British Royal Navy and merchant ships owned and operated by private
enterprises are one of the main reasons Britain controlled such a vast empire. Without the entire
country going all-in on state-of-the-art ocean vessels, there would have been no chance of
Britain being able to spread its influence, population, or soldiers across the globe.
Besides having a large fleet of ships, there was another aspect of British life that could
be directly connected to the invasion of the world. The desire for money, resources,
and status were all very strong motivators. At the beginning of the Age of Exploration,
many voyages from Europe to other parts of the world were made just to see what was there.
These expeditions obviously wanted to find gold and riches in undiscovered lands,
but there was also a sense of discovering the unknown as well. This was not the case with the
expansion of the British Empire. In a way, the hard part had already been done. Information was
coming into Europe from around the world about the peoples, resources, and opportunities that
were ripe for the taking when Britain was finally ready to start its global invasion.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, Britain was slowly amassing ships and advancing its
naval technology but wasn’t super aggressive about invading new territories. But as entrepreneurs and
established businessmen started to lay their eyes on the goods coming from other parts of the world,
they saw opportunity. Perhaps the only other thing the British wanted
more than a strong Navy was money, and there were a lot of goods and
resources far from home that could make businessmen incredibly rich.
The British government saw the same lucrative opportunities as well and encouraged their
citizens to finance their own expeditions and set up trade routes. The British monarchy was
even willing to provide protection using the Royal Navy to ensure that British ventures
around the world remained safe. Once word spread that there were lucrative opportunities in India,
East Asia, and the Americas, Britain couldn’t wait to launch business ventures across the world.
Of course, their interests needed to be protected, which meant that soldiers from
the British military or hired armed men were almost always brought along for the journey.
Whenever a society with more advanced weaponry and vessels encounters people who cannot match
their strength, the same thing always happens. It wasn’t long before Britain realized that these new
lands contained the resources they badly needed to keep the Empire going. And even though there
were people in these new lands, the British were not going to let them stand in the way of
making a profit. In many cases, rather than even trying to make a trade deal, the first instinct
for British merchants was to invade first and worry about the people they displaced later.
To be fair, the British were not the only nation that used this tactic.
It is a tale as old as time when it comes to human history. The more weapons and technology
a nation has, the more willing they are to resort to violence rather than use diplomacy.
So, the two main driving forces behind the British invasion of 90 percent of
the countries in the world were a national collaboration to build and improve upon
naval ships and the knowledge that there were vast quantities of wealth to be made.
Eventually, in the early 1600s, the British had built enough vessels to spread across the globe.
Numerous elites were willing to dump huge amounts of start-up money into expeditions
to try and become even more wealthy. Many also had their sights set on raising their rank in
society and bolstering their status. At the time, it wasn’t clear how vast the empire would be,
but in a matter of decades, it quickly became apparent that no other nation
would be able to spread their influence across the Earth like the British would.
The stage was set for world domination. For the past hundred years or so, Britain had
been focusing on the country's infrastructure, which gave them the ability to advance their
naval technology and make use of the resources they had available on their islands. However,
now it was time to branch out for a couple of reasons. The first was because if they
waited any longer, they would fall behind the rest of the countries in Europe in terms of
setting up colonies. The second was they were quickly depleting their resources at home.
It became a necessity to send ships out to gather more resources and trade goods to keep the British
economy going. They also needed revenue to fund future ventures and their massive Navy.
This created somewhat of a snowball effect. The need to acquire more land with resources caused
Britain to invade parts of the world that had been pretty much left alone until that point in time.
There was definitely already trading going on and small colonies set up in these parts of the
world—such as in the Americas and East Asia—but Britain was about to take it to the next level.
As British naval officers and merchants claimed more land for the British Crown,
it allowed them to impose their culture and beliefs on the people they came into contact with.
Whether it was willingly or by force, people were being brought into the British Empire.
With more people came more manpower to manufacture goods and vessels.
It also meant more people could be enlisted in the military and invasion forces.
This is where the snowball effect comes from. The more lands the British conquered,
the more resources they gained, which resulted in the ability to conquer even more lands.
Even though the British spent tons of money on their naval ships, they were frugal in other
parts of their society. This allowed them to be super successful in their expansion game.
The British planned on expanding without overspending, which was easier said than done,
as many other countries such as Spain and France found out. The trick was that
the British did not invest a lot of money into supporting their colonies once they were set up.
They were happy to spend immense sums on military forces to invade an area
or to fund ventures to faraway lands in return for a cut of the profits.
But once a colony was established, it was expected to be more or less self-sufficient.
The other tactic that the British government implemented to save money was allowing private
ventures to assume most of the risk. The way it worked was that the government allowed private
individuals to mount their own expeditions and set up their own businesses abroad
as long as they knew that they would be paying taxes to the Crown. The leaders of
Britain understood that if successful, the private venture would make massive profits,
much of which would remain in the hands of the private businessmen who funded the venture.
But a cut would also need to be given to the Crown, which would allow whatever
goods were being procured by the private business to be sold across the Empire.
Basically, the private ventures were more than welcome to make a profit however they saw
fit. But if they expected to sell their goods within Britain or any of their colonies,
they would be paying taxes to the Crown. And with more money flowing into both private
business and the British government, more expansion was possible. For the government,
this setup was low-risk, high reward. For private businessmen,
it was high-risk, high-reward. If all went according to plan, both sides would win.
The British government also wasn’t naive about what products were being sold and how much wealth
was being accumulated for many of its citizens. In fact, one of the reasons the British were able
to spread throughout the world was because they actually exploited their own people.
Profits were not just coming from creating colonies and then taxing the people who lived
in them, they were also coming from citizens on the British Isles. Once the empire expanded
and plantations and factories were set up abroad to acquire or manufacture exotic goods,
the British people couldn’t get enough of them. Plantations producing sugar and tobacco would
not only make a profit in the colonies that they were located in but back home as well.
People in Britain paid top dollar for goods from the colonies. And since many of the businessmen
who became rich off of invading other people’s lands and exploiting their resources still
lived in Britain, there was plenty of money to purchase the goods being brought in from abroad.
The British government knew this and put some pretty crazy rules in place to
ensure that all types of goods still found their way back to the heart of the empire.
Although the British government let the colonies pretty much run themselves to keep costs down,
they still played a major role in the shipping and trading of goods from the
colonies. The deal was that the businesses in the colonies had a monopoly on their interests
within the colony itself. However, if they wanted to trade their goods to anyone else,
including other colonies within the empire, the goods must be transported on English ships.
This set up a closed system where no matter where the goods came from, they would pass through
Britain at some point. And if they didn’t, they would at least be taxed by the British government.
No matter where a good was going to or coming from, the British government would get a cut.
And if the goods were coming into Britain itself, it was all the better. The government could then
tax the goods being exported from a colony and tax it again as an import to Britain.
The way that the British government accumulated enough money to invade most of the countries of
the world came from exploiting their own citizens, their own colonies,
and their own businesses. However, there was an even more sinister
tactic that Britain used to make profits and expand their empire.
Pretty early on, Britain got into the slave-trading business. By the late 1500s, British
businessmen were beginning to see how profitable the slave trade could actually be, and in 1663 the
British government gave its citizens the go-ahead to export and import humans as a commodity. This
may very well be the darkest time in British history and human history as a whole. Slavery
of some kind has always existed; this was just the first time it was used as a way for corporations
to make money. There are very few points in history that are as sobering and disgraceful
as when Europeans treated the people of Africa as a commodity to be sold to make a profit.
That being said, the British Empire couldn’t sustain itself without the use of slaves. This
form of labor made it possible to work the land in their new colonies while keeping
costs low since the slaves were not paid. It also meant that the people who were sold into
slavery were seen as replaceble so they were forced to work until their bodies gave out,
only to then be replaced by the next shipment coming from Africa. Slaves became
the main workforce in many British colonies, especially in North America and the Caribbean.
The slave trade brought in massive profits for those involved. Cities like Liverpool and Bristol
grew in size as a direct result of the slave trade. Demand for cheap human labor increased,
and Britain created the Royal African Company, one of several businesses in charge of invading
different parts of the African continent and acquiring more slaves to sell internationally.
It was a truly horrible form of business, but it made British companies exuberant amounts
of money. This allowed them to then increase in size and conquer even more territories in Africa.
The British recognized that Africa and the slave trade would be lucrative from an early
point. However, they also knew another part of the world held massive quantities of wealth,
and of course, the British wanted their slice. While many other countries were
going west to make their fortunes, the British sent more and more ships and men
to the far east to expand their empire. This allowed them to become even more
wealthy while invading coastal communities, islands, and entire countries in the process.
It was Britain’s foresight to establish trade routes early on that allowed them to be a
dominant presence in East Asia. As they expanded, there were already three other empires that had
established themselves in the region. Parts of the Ottoman Empire, the Chinese Empire, and the
Mughal Empire had all become trading partners with one another and with countries in Europe.
It was the British East India company that would pave the way for the British invasion of this part
of the world. As they brought in more and more goods from the far east, the British government
realized how lucrative that part of the world could be. They had already accrued wealth from
their colonies in the Americas and the slave trade, but after the American Revolution and
the abolishment of the slave trade in 1806, Britain needed to find more lands to expand
its empire into and profit from. India was rich with natural resources and people who
could be used as an incredibly cheap labor force. It wasn't quite slavery, but it was really close.
It was decided by the British in 1858 that they would control much of India and make it
a colony to bolster the power and wealth of the Empire. Without the private businesses
which had already set the foundation for the British in India by manipulating its leaders
and using their wealth or brute force to get rid of anyone who tried to stop them,
Britain would have had a much harder time colonizing this part of the world.
And it was this large colony that then provided the British with a more permanent
presence in the region, which allowed them to invade the surrounding areas as well.
This brings us to another critical decision by the British government that allowed them to invade
90% of the world. Unlike some countries, Britain embraced private corporations.
At the time, there were few places in the world where someone could dream up a business,
find multiple sources of funding, and have the blessing of the government other than in England.
This support of private industry and enterprise was what allowed Britain to grow so rapidly.
The important distinction between private businesses in Britain and the rest of the world
is that companies like The London Company and East India Company were independently
owned and operated but backed by the British government who would offer things
like protection on the open seas and military support to squash rebellions in the colonies.
This allowed the businesses to spread throughout the world, taking the British culture with them.
It also allowed the companies and British government to make large sums of money
which fueled the empire-building machine that Britain had become. Without private business,
the British Empire would never have been able to expand as it did. And without the
British government and military, the private companies would not have been
able to set up lucrative ventures that would produce and trade goods across the empire.
This brings us to an interesting question. We know that Britain was able to invade practically every
country in the world because of their ships, extreme wealth, and the embracing of private
industry. So, what countries were able to escape the British invasion, and how did they do it?
The 22 countries that were not invaded by the British are Andorra, Belarus, Bolivia,
Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Ivory Coast,
Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mali, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Mongolia,
Paraguay, Sao Tome and Principe, Sweden, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Vatican City.
You’ll notice that not all but many of these nations are landlocked and
do not have an oceanic coastline. This should come as no surprise,
as the British Navy was one of the reasons the country became so powerful. Launching
an invasion across multiple countries to reach one that is inland would be time-consuming and
would cost a lot of money and resources. These are all things the British tried to avoid. Therefore,
one of the reasons many of these countries escaped being invaded was because of their location.
You may also notice that several of the countries are in Europe. Although this is much closer to
home than say the Marshall Islands, it didn’t make sense for the British to try
and invade deep into the heart of Europe. This would have caused multiple countries
to declare war on Britain simultaneously, leading to a loss of men and resources. So,
for the British, leaving certain countries untouched was an intentional decision.
It is important to note that the research done by author Stuart Laycock to show that Britain
invaded 90% of the world's countries has a few caveats. For one, the term invasion is
used pretty loosely in that the British did not need to invade an entire country or even hold
it for an extended period of time. An invasion in this context just means that British forces
or businesses made contact with the people of a region or exploited the lands of that country.
Also, the borders of countries are fluid, and the territories of the past are very different
than they are today. The British may have had a single port on the coast of one country,
but this would count as an “invasion” in the scheme of this research. Regardless,
there is no denying that the British controlled the largest empire in history.
To put it into perspective, the United States has had military personnel in 153 countries,
according to the Department of Defense. This is about 78% of the countries in the world.
Therefore, the Brits were able to out invade even the United States, and this was
long before aircraft or high-speed vessels of any kind. It would seem
that a strong Navy and the desire to make lots of money are two necessities
for any nation that wants to invade 90% of the countries in the world.
Now watch “The One Reason British Royal Navy Ships Were Invincible In World War 2.”