Overall, has the UK been a positive or negative force in the world?

WE WUZ CIVILISATION N SHIET

Its no wonder, France founded England after all.
Really, anything the English have ever accomplished of meaningful or positive nature can be traced back to France civilizing them and turning them from backwards savages to meaningful participants in the European order.

>"""""helped""""" some shitty niggers in Africa

Equivalent to the Ottoman Empire desu.

>financed the Russians against based Napoleon
>financed the Russians (who were also commies this time) against based Hitler

Anglos are the cancer of Europe, and Russians are their tool to cause harm

>The Germans supported the Russian revolution
>/int/ shitposters will conveniently forget this

>hitler
>napoleon
>based

autism identifies with autism

France didn't even exist as a country in 1066, but even if you persist in the misguided belief that the Normans were French, within 200 years they had been completely assimilated into English culture to the point of dropping their primitive Gallic tongue in favour of the superior English language.

Negative. But i'm a frog so i'm not being objective

>implying William the Conqueror doesnt litterally call the Normans "French" in his charter for London

>admitting that he was called william the conqueror and not guillaume le conquerant
See, the Normans anglicised themselves the second they touched the beach at Pevensey.

>France didn't even exist as a country in 1066
Actually it did
France exists as a country since 987 (and as a nation since the early 800s)

>but even if you persist in the misguided belief that the Normans were French, within 200 years they had been completely assimilated into English culture
Actually, Edward III was the first post-1066 English king to speak English (some 300 years after the conquest)

>to the point of dropping their primitive Gallic tongue in favour of the superior English language.
An English language that had been forever modified by the addition of countless French words
It's barely possible to make a sentence in English without French originated words nowdays
The extend of the change between pre-1066 English and "French-soiled" modern one is so huge that both forms arent mutually intelligible

t. lindybeige

What do u think?

He wasn't called William the Conqueror by his contemporaries, idiot
Neither him nor any of his nobles spoke a word of English
He came by the name of "Wilhelm le Bastard"

>France exists as a country since 987
By that logic England has existed since the founding of Wessex in the early 6th Century
>Edward III was the first post-1066 English king to speak English
The first to speak it fluently was Henry III and it became the official language of the Court by the early 13th Century

>An English language that had been forever modified by the addition of countless French words
Notwithstanding that a fuckton of them come either firectly or indirectly from Latin, the fact that it cnn assimilate words from other languages while remaining quintessentially English is evidence of its superiority.

>The extend of the change between pre-1066 English and "French-soiled" modern one is so huge that both forms arent mutually intelligible
>implying that any one of the dozen or so non-mutually intelligible languages spoken in what is now France in 1066 can be understood by the average modern French speaker

Ah yes, that good old traditional French name Wilhelm.

Nice try, you perpetual shabbo goy

t. Lindybeige

>By that logic England has existed since the founding of Wessex in the early 6th Century
England as we know it exists since the Normans created it

>The first to speak it fluently was Henry III
Still 200 fucking years after the conquest
Meanwhile, Rollo himself learned French less than a decade after settling in France

>and it became the official language of the Court by the early 13th Century
Wrong
Edward III is the one who made it the court's language in the mid 14th century

>Notwithstanding that a fuckton of them come either firectly or indirectly from Latin
The huge majority of them come directly from French (and thus indirectly from Latin but still humiliating)
Only very few technical terms come directly from Latin (due to it being the religiys and scientific lingua franca during the Middle Age)

>the fact that it cnn assimilate words from other languages while remaining quintessentially English is evidence of its superiority.
Except it didnt remain anything like Old English
Try to read a text in Old English, you'll see

>Ah yes, that good old traditional French name Wilhelm.
Whilhelm was the Norman regional variant of the French medieval name Guilhelm
Normans had the habit of turning French "G" into "W"
It was their sole dialect specificity (kinda like Americans sometimes turn "S" into Z" or "our" into "or")
That's why "guerre" became "werre" (war in Modern English), "garde" became "warde" (ward in Modern English), "garantie" became "warantie" (warranty in Modern English)

Btw for the two last exemples I cited (garde and garantie), the regular non-Norman French form also entered English because after the Normans, the Angevins (who were pure Frenchmen without special regional spelling) ruled English for four centuries (until 1485)

lmao even the British leadership admits this

Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary in 2003
"Mr President, I speak on behalf of a very old country founded in 1066 by the French"

upi.com/Council-members-We-are-older-than-you/99881045278740/

Its literally just Lindybeige who argues otherwise

Jack Straw was a colossal faggot who genuinely seemed to dislike this country. Then again, he was New Labour, so that's obvious.

Not at all, we knew all colonies would eventually go independent, but we preferred a smooth transition of power seen in the commonwealth with Australia, Canada, etc, rather than an outright war of independence.

>England planting seeds of civilisation

The only good think Britain did was accidentally setting up English as a lingua franca while they were busy conquering shit. English is by far the easiest language I have dealt with. Now imagine if German, Russian, or Mandarin were the internationally dominant languages. That would have definitely halted globalization and its conquences.

Yeah it's obvious that they were colonizing shit for profit and not out of altruism, all benefits the Africans got from it were not really intended.

>start the industrial revolution
>negligible

negligible? having annexed 1/3 if the earth's land mass? please.

>annexing jungles full of niggers
>relevant

>The only good think Britain did was accidentally setting up English as a lingua franca while they were busy conquering shit

Britain didn't make English the lingua franca
Post-WW2 US hegemony did (with the help of Hollywood, American pop music and recently the Internet)
Did you really believe that Britain conquering Zimbabwe and Pakistan is what made English relevant
French was still the lingua franca during the peak of the British Empire (which is why German diplomats used French to address British ones during WW1)

this.
He shouldn't be called the English now it should be called American

Britain conquered empty backward shitholes
Europe was were everything important was happening before WW2, and Britain was irrelevant as shit there
Germans and Russians were the ones truly dominating the 19th and early 20th century

Japs made it clear that they speak American and not British

>Did you really believe that Britain conquering Zimbabwe and Pakistan is what made English relevant

yes

when major global ports like cape town, bombay, singapore, suez, aden, rangoon, brunei, melbourne, quebec are fall under the same flag the language of that flag becomes quite important

None of these places were relevant before Post-WW2 globalization
Europe (and to a lesser extend the US and China) were all that mattered

>England as we know it exists since the Normans created it
William the Conqueror's entire claim to the throne was his argument that he was Edward the Confessor's rightful heir, Harold having promised him the throne after William rescued him from a shipwreck. How you can claim that England didn't exist prior to 1066 is beyond me.

>Still 200 fucking years after the conquest
The King switching to English was the final stage in the Normans' assimilation by the English. Unlike French, English at the time had no exulted status so for the King to properly make the switch was an indicator of his total cultural assimilation, rather than an attempt to ingratiate himself with the local in-crowd.

>Edward III is the one who made it the court's language in the mid 14th century
Having looked this up it seems you are correct. Not sure where I misremembered mid 13th Century from.

>Except it didnt remain anything like Old English
I am unaware of any other living language which would be intelligible to speakers of the "same" language a thousand years previously. Grammatically Norman French contributed the better part of fuck all; the shift in old English away from a synthetic language to its modern retard-friendly grammar owes far more to the Norse influence than the Normans. I certainly don't see stealing a bunch of words from French as some sort of humiliation. It's certainly not humiliating. Being so butthurt that nobody wants your gutter Latin excuse of a language any more that you have to set up a government department to fine people who use too many English words, now that's humiliating.

>Normans had the habit of turning French "G" into "W"
Didn't know this, interesting. Thanks.

>Germans and Russians were the ones truly dominating the 19th and early 20th century
Given that Germany only existed for about 20 years of the 19th Century that's quite the achievement.

[citation needed]

...

Bruh nobody could speak English in mainland Europe 2 generations ago
When my grandmother tries to read english she always pronounces it in the French way kek

>Germans cannot exist if Germany doesn't exist

it's this thread again

>French family (Plantagenet) exiled to England attempts to take back their homeland but fail
>Somehow this is a British conquest

Lindybeige pls

>Not sure where I misremembered mid 13th Century from.

Probably a Lindybeige video
Like all of the false truth that make you wrongly believe that Britain was ever great

This lindyposting has gone too far

>Suez
>Irrelevant

>keep progress at bay and enforces status quo
>positive

too bad napoleon ultimately lost his campaign - the world would probably be a better place

>germany would never be a thing
>eternal anglo would become finite anglo
>no fascism/communism rising
>no world wars

we would probably be living in space right now if it wasn't for the bongs

It was irrelevant until the French built a canal there (a canal that the Anglos allowed to fall to dirty muslims)

Good by liberal standards.
>Greatest catalyst for abolition of all mankind and termination of slavery
>Tremendous scientific advances, drastic reductions in hunger, child mortality, disease etc.
>Industrial evolution, huge population growth, suddenly a bunch of people can be doing meaningless jobs and having meaningless thoughts.
>...

BUT IN MY OPINION IT HAS BEEN A FORCE FOR BAD!
Should have found a way to stay the preeminent power and ruled with an iron fist over all other races.

British Empire was best empire

You failed to post the superior version

Gee, I dont know user...

This one is even worse as it isnt even military conquest but just the land the Plantagenets owned before taking over England
Pic related, the dates of acquisitions

>the reason why russia went commie
>the reason why middle-east became a massive shithole
>the reason why africans are currently colonizing most of the world
>the reason why yanks exist

Take a wild guess m8.

This. Anglos are a pest.

>Own half of France
>All of England
>Still lose
It's a good thing Anglo's only meme about Agincourt and don't show maps.

>own all of europe
>still lose

lmao fucking surrender monkeys

French?

Now show the map that shows they were fighting off every world power.

>post a map with every world power in 1812

oh look there's one here

No
Quick rule of Veeky Forums observable on flag boards

Anyone who mocks France is British (as proven by pic related) but not everyone who mocks Britain is French

This one?
That's about the Revolutionary Wars though, not the Napoleonic Wars

>Anyone who mocks France is British

I take it you're too young to remember the Iraq War

woah

Negative

I browse /pol/ and /int/, and Americans are 100 times less likely to shitpost about France than Brits
That's about Veeky Forums of course
I don't doubt that if you take the internet as a whole, you'd find many Americans mocking France
But Veeky Forums is on Veeky Forums, and I have no reason to believe that the nationality of people mocking France on Veeky Forums would be very different from those on /pol/ and /int/

woah... it's almost as if France actually had to fight someone who wasn't tribals in order to build their Empire.

>your allies are italy and spain

Suddenly Napoleon's defeat makes much more sense

if he hadn't have conquered meme countries maybe he'd have been able to take on actual powers

actual powers like the great Aborigine?
We should all tremble in awe of the great Red Coat.

...

this..Anglos are pathetic

>France actually had to fight someone who wasn't tribals

They really came up against some stiff competition amongst the rich developed civilizations of the densely populated Sahara desert

You have issues with reading comprehension?

The sentence "France actually had to fight someone who wasn't tribals " doesnt mean that France never ever fought tribal shits as well

The main difference is that, unlike Brits who only have their shitty empire colonial empire built by machinegunning tribal subhumans to take pride in, France also had a much more glorious European empire built by conquering equal people

Have you ever seen a Frenchman take pride in France's colonial empire (although it was the second largest of the world)?
Nope, because colonial empire are gay ass shit
Brits take pride in theirs because it's literally all they have

>spanish
>italians
>literally who Luxembourg-tier german principalities
>"equal people"

maybe to a french person

>implying Spaniards havent a more impressive military history than Brits
>implying that Italy wasnt taken by Napoleon from Austria, the biggest European country at the time after Russia
>implying that the Low Countries werent taken from the hands of Austrians, Prussians and Brits (who can arguably be considered as an inferior people, I reckon)

Pic related, Brits were already Dunkirking from the continent 150 years before it was cool

This is what I hate about Veeky Forums

>spaniards
>impressive military history

I suppose you have to give them credit for inventing biological warfare against naked mexicans, but have the Spanish ever actually won a notable battle against other Europeans?

>Finding that he had been beaten by such an inferior foe, the Spanish second-in-command asked Cochrane for a certificate assuring him that he had done all he could to defend his ship.[7] Cochrane obliged, with the equivocal wording that he had 'conducted himself like a true Spaniard'.

>listing a bunch of good things

That it tells the truth?

Good lord, that image, how can one country be so butthurt about another?

No, giving a retarded opinion just to be contrarian and even worse, not explaining their unjustifyable statement so people can see where they are coming from.

>but have the Spanish ever actually won a notable battle against other Europeans
Are you serious? The Spanish were the dominant military power in Europe from the late 15th century until they were defeated by the French in the mid 17th century.

Spain dominated Europe for centuries
Reminder that if it wasn't for a storm, the Invincible Armada would have destroyed England

The amount of anti-British whinging in threads like this absolutely kills me. Veeky Forums has made having a proper debate about Britain utterly impossible

There is no debate because the OP is a faggot, obviously the answer is neutral, every country in the world did bad and good things, England isn't the exception

No true respected historian in the world deals in morals when referring to history, that is left to politicians and the people.
History is a recollection and anlysis of facts and their consequences, not a dick contest or an attempt to made sense or to judge what was only coherent in its own time-frame.
Fact : The UK has influenced greatly mankind and the world as we know it today.
Was it a bad or a good thing ?
The answer to this far more biased question is entirely up to who you are and what your moral compass moral consists in.

>No true respected historian in the world deals in morals when referring to history
That's not true at all. Historians don't just ausisticly list facts, they are always making judgments. You have to be really naive to believe otherwise.

> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis)
> Among historians, the orthodox view may be that reading modern notions of morality into the past is to commit the error of presentism. To avoid this, historians restrict themselves to describing what happened and attempt to refrain from using language that passes judgment.

They may have their own judgment

All can agree that its effect on the world was a positive one, keeping the light of civilization burning in the remote isles too far for the German to despoil and raze on the collapse of the Roman Empire itself was one of the greatest achievements in history

Historians have known that objectivity is a meme for decades now. Rankean postivism is discredited. Very few historians consider themselves as scientists either, it's humanities.

>remote isles too far for the German to despoil and raze on the collapse of the Roman Empire
Um, I don't know how to tell you this user...

France had to colonize England in 1066 to bring civilization back to the isles.