ITT: Things normies believe that annoy you

>A bunch of completely untrained farm boys with no navy take on some of the world's largest professional armies and win
>This is completely unimpressive

>inb4 "French assistance"
The colonists only got that assistance because they had already shown the strength of their forces by encircling the British at Saratoga.

>a bunch of peasants, with the help of two European powers stronger than Britain, take on the country with the shittiest land army in Europe

Fixed
Odds were against Britain in that war

By 1775 Britain already had a great naval might and world influence. It's just that full-scale colonization of India, Africa, Australia and Canada didn't come around until Victorian era.Most maps that get posted presenting territorial extent of Britain are from late 19th/early 20th century.

British Empire was at its greatest extent after WW1, when it has acquired Middle East and Palestine.

Jesus fucking Christ get some new material, this shit is old. Are you the same guy that brings this up in every thread about Britain or American culture? Or are there just numerous retards on Veeky Forums determined to shitpost the same point over and over again?

>getting this buttdevasted over the truth

Come on, Nigel

/int/ style shitposting isn't an argument. If you want to believe that's the truth then go ahead, just don't clog up the board with garbage like this when better historical discussion could be taking its place. But it's whatever, clearly you're such a salty cunt about British history that you've taken the time to support the bullshit contrarian views posted in this thread, so I doubt that whatever I say is going to change your mind. Kill yourself

Is that your way to say you agree (or want to believe otherwise but have no arguments to support that)?

That Germany wasn't the main instigator of World War I

>A-H invades Serbia
>somehow this is Germany's fault

The German general staff pressured Austria into invading Serbia

thisand Germany declared war on both France and Russia, invaded a neutral Belgium which forced Britain to step in.

The typical
>france was never the GOAT nation it has been throughout history and has always surrendered in big wars.
>france was easily beaten in WWI and WWII and were always faggots that didn't even try to fight the germans
>Rome was this sort of glorious and amazing nation that was totally not filled with degenerate assholes

The Austro-Hungarians didn't HAVE to invade Serbia. And Russia was allied with Serbia, and France was allied with Russia and UIK, so they would have gone to war anyway.

Spain and France were the most important in the 18th Century, then progressively more to France and Austria/Prussia towards the latter half. Britain starts it's route to empire from 1756 onwards, but can only really start to call itself as such in the 19-20th Century.

also don't forget the 'informal empire', literally land we basically owned through regional power projection but didn't administrate ourselves ie. China, South America

>untrained farm boys with access to the greatest drill masters of the 18th century
>fighting against the most neglected part of the british armed forces
>awful politics and generals on britains part
>having the british divert majority of their american forces back to britain for fear of invasion from france/spain
>expecting the british to do well in a guerilla war halfway across the globe
>expecting the British to do well when fighting against the two other superpowers in europe

and you keep on calling us an empire, all we owned was America (which was in revolt), Canada (which was barely settled and had a large french population), and small parts of India. I'm surprised we held on that long against a guerilla force.

you can back us up when we say beating guerillas from halfway across the globe is difficult yeah

They didn't have to, but they did. And Germany supported them.

It was though, it's naval architecture was at-least a generation ahead of their closest competitors, they dominated trade routes and gained the financial supremacy that came with it, had an unprecedented command of the high seas, were MUCH further ahead of all other nations industriously (even this early) and though it's not a terribly populated country, the UK had the best provisioned, most efficient and disciplined fighting men.
Being able to fight Mysore, the Dutch republic, the fledgling US and BOTH the french and Spanish empires at once with-out ever being terribly concerned bears witness to there strength in the era.
OP is right about the odds though, the rebels were bound to win eventually with the aforementioned support.
>shittiest land army in Europe
The UK still had hangups about large standing armies and didn't need one because they could cuck those "two European powers stronger than Britain" (what is the Seven Year's War)
That being said, they rarely raised anything larger than expeditionary forces - which was evidently enough to get Napoleon to surrender wasn't it?

>people believed in Flat Earth until Columbus
>Napoleon was evil Hitler-tier dictator
>Europeans were the only devils who were enslaving poor Africans (Islamic trade trade??? What Islamic slave trade???)

You're pretty ignorant of your own history if you are in fact from the UK and this isn't a false flag thread.

>guerilla
>in the American Revolutionary War

No such thing
It was a conventional war that Britain lost to standing armies on the battlefield

>which was evidently enough to get Napoleon to surrender wasn't it?
No, that was the huge european armies that fought him

>"we totally had naval supremacy guys!!"
>end up losing the US Revolutionary War because French and Spanish navies prevented Britain from sending reinforcement across the ocean

British naval supremacy started after Trafalgar

Thanks you so much. I think you gave me some perspective replying to that user.

Do you have any recommended reading from an non Anglo-American historian on the time period regarding England's strength relative of the other powers?

>Being able to fight Mysore, the Dutch republic, the fledgling US and BOTH the french and Spanish empires at once with-out ever being terribly concerned bears witness to there strength in the era.

If you thing that's some though shit, look at what France did just two decades later (and successfully, unlike you)

Sorry, esl

>Do you have any recommended reading from an non Anglo-American historian on the time period regarding England's strength relative of the other powers?

Napoleon published a book on the topic titled "A Nation of Shopkeepers"

>they didn't have to
Thanks for agreeing with me and proving me right.

People who think Ancient Egyptians were like those of current Egypt
Current Egyptians are arabs, from the Arab invasions
Ancient Egyptians were white (Phoenicians)

This is Britain's European participation in the Seven Years War;

>en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_of_Klosterzeven

>Or in short, be allied with other German States, lose (royally btfo) first time you meet in battle a French continental army, get subsequently surrounded, proceed to surrender monkey your entire army, sign up a full fledged Capitulation (or as anglos put it, a ""Convention"") effectively putting those German States out of the war and your army kicked the fuck out of Europe, betray that ""Convention"" the next day, (right about the time it took the Generals to Dunkirk their way back to the English monkey-island) due to Prussia being outraged at all these treachery and surrender-monkeyness, spent the rest of the war subsidizing moneys to Prussian-German armies while focusing your entire army and navy on fighting the 3-4 frogs standing in North America.

Britain was a maritime power, the main one indeed, with some projection force outside their monkey island. That's all.

As for the American Independence War, the american theatre itself was in itself secondary to other theatres in military terms and even politically secondary to the Brits themselves.

WE

WUZ

WHITES

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_guerrilla_warfare#American_Revolution

Ding ding ding retard alert!

The British Navy became the best after they evaluated what went wrong in the last war. I.E American independence war. By the 1790's Britain had the best fleet. That's why the French consistently ran and hid in ports like Toulon and tried to drag other navies in like the Spanish and Dutch.

Napoleon abandoned his army in Egypt because they were BTFO by the British Navy and that was in the Med!

They only fought because of the inability of the French to defeat the English army ;^)

The only quality the British army lacked was manpower. Superior equipment, morale and tactics while being the only non conscript army in Europe.

Given that most of Africa was a space no one cared about, their carribbean possesions and indian made them pretty huge, plus owning canada just above you

>>A bunch of completely untrained farm boys with no navy take on some of the world's largest professional armies and win
>>This is completely unimpressive
Literally not what happened though. Go to bed Mel

>Veeky Forums constantly posts the map which rights off the British empire as non-possessions populated by "abos", "natives" and "niggers"
>also posts these maps where the vast majority of blue is literally oceans of nothingness with little to no context and an obscenely facile understanding.
How many men did, oh i don't know, all of the Americas send to fight in the revolutionary wars?
How many guns did eastern Australia bring for the Flanders campaign?
How many officers from Mozambique were present at the treaty of Lunéville?

This may shock you but the UK actually gained territory during the French Revolutionary wars and reliably exercised indomitably. From the wiki you've capped:
>The naval war also continued, with the United Kingdom maintaining a blockade of France by sea. Non-combatants Russia, Prussia, Denmark, and Sweden joined to protect neutral shipping from British attacks, but were unsuccessful.
5 major European powers unable to so much as break the blockade and defy the inhabitants of the worlds ninth largest island... baka
>In the Second Battle of Algeciras, four days later, the British captured a French ship and sank two others, killing around 2000 French for the loss of 12 British.
On that battle, btw
>In France, despite the heavy Spanish losses, the battle was celebrated as a victory, with Troude widely praised and promoted for the defence of his ship.
12 losses to 2000
>celebrated as a victory

you can post some coalition wiki screenshot or the casualties of some battles of the peninsular war all you like - the fact remains, Napoleon viewed England (not even the UK) as his primary adversary all his life and despite all of Frances advantages, he, their emperor died in British custody.

>True communism has been tried

>Napoleon viewed England (not even the UK)
Wow, it's almost as if England was the most revelant and politically dominant country in the UK
>he, their emperor died in British custody.
That's literally "fuck you" to the coalition though, if he surrendered to Germans or (especially) Russians he would be executed, while the British, despite all the propaganda, didn't hate him as much as people like to believe

Any book on the history of naval warfare or the age of the sail will outline Britain's clear and stark advantages, most of them are written by Anglos/Anglo-Americans. Don't be fooled by Bernard Ireland 's name - he is not a bad place to start.
Veeky Forums hates the UK but it's ascendancy is actually really interesting and a pretty major episode in history.
It wasn't luck or environmental determinism or "hiding on their island"
There is plenty to read about - how they utilized their growing financial and industrial might, the advent of block mills, mass production, industry, copper sheathing, the reforms of the Earl of St Vincent, the eradication of scurvy, development of amphibious warfare etc.
>What is the Battle of Quiberon Bay
>What is the Annus Mirabilis
If the UK was so shit, then France must have been absolutely abominable to keep losing to them, god know what league the rest of the world must have been in.
Why don't you realize that insulting a nation which at that moment was objectively superior is just cutting your nose to spite your face.

>Wow, it's almost as if England was the most revelant and politically dominant country in the UK
He was trying to arouse the nationalist sentiments in other parts of the UK but only found slight success with Ireland. Even so it's interesting that with his propaganda he was careful to only attack England so as to not bite off more than he can chew only to embarrass himself by never getting the better of even the southern part of that small and unremarkable island.
>That's literally "fuck you" to the coalition though, if he surrendered to Germans or (especially) Russians he would be executed, while the British, despite all the propaganda, didn't hate him as much as people like to believe
You mean the British were the most civilized, unwilling to execute a surrendered noble, and Napoleon new this? It's not a fuck you, Napoleon was dramatic; he surrendered to England because he lost to England. If the UK was as irrelevant and limp as Veeky Forums pretends it was they would have been in no position to accept him anyway with how much the Bourbons, Prussians, Austrians and Russians hated him.

>he surrendered to England because he lost to England.
Uh, source? Because we all remember when Napoleon was really on top of things and then disastrously invaded England with an army of 500,000 men, only to have that army effectively wiped out.

>Napoleon viewed England (not even the UK) as his primary adversary

Far from it
Pretty sure he saw Austria as his main foe

>I've never read a book and therefore don't know what Pax Britannica is

Pax Britannica is supposed to have started in 1815, not before
And anyway it's just a meme as proven by the Crimean War, the German wars of unification and ultimately WW1

Diplomacy my nigger
"the pen is mightier than the sword"
Won fair and square. Nothing stopped them from allying up with other global powers.

>Prussians declare they will execute him after Waterloo
>Napoleon withdraws and considers migating to US
>Port he intended to use in escape gets blockaded
>Napoleon sends his men to the British ship to discuss surrender terms
>Captain says he will end up in asylum in England
>Napoleon becomes hostage while British discuss what to do with him
>Prince Regent, Prime Minister, and Secretary of War want him dead, but he gets declared to be POW
>Even though France and UK aren't at war anymore, and Napoleon literally lost French citizenship
>UK can't do anything with him without doing something illegal (or more like, controversial)
>They can't put him on trial either, since the term "war criminal" wasn't coined yet and Coalition declared most of the wars, so he could easily get away with it (which also means they knew Bonaparte wasn't that bad)
>So they send him on St. Helena as a retired general on half pay, literally

>The amount of land a country owns is proportionate to how powerful it is

Except every claim of Britain being powerful ever steamed from the size of its empire
And while Britain in 1775 was certainly not powerful through amount of land owned, it was even less so through military might

>what is trade
>what is money
>what is navy

That is such a straw-man, I've never seen Brits argue their power "steamed from the size of its empire"
The maps people post, derisively, were usually originally made for Edwardian school boys to give them a sense of place and instill pride during geography lessons.
Brits would far sooner point to ingenuity, intrepidness, naval dominance, a strong diplomatic service, superior industrial and financial sectors etc.
Personally i'd say it's probably got something to do with how clever they are.
The two smartest men in history, Newton and Maxwell just happen to be from the island which came to dominate so much?

What was he going to do with that money on st. Helena

Britain was the most powerful army in europe at the time. France was defeated 20 years earlier. And outside of the American fronts the brits kicked ass during the revolution

>Britain was the most powerful army in europe at the time. France was defeated 20 years earlier.

Are you retarded?
Britain had the shittiest army in Europe in that era, the Seven Years War was enough to prove that
Prussia was considered to have the best army, followed by France, Austria and Russia

During the revolution the Brits kicked ass outside of the American colonies and even then they came close to winning about 4 different times

>During the revolution the Brits kicked ass outside of the American colonies

Maybe because these were only naval battles, faggot
And maybe one land skirmish in India but everyone else was focused on the American theater, so Brits had easy time there

>When you can't so much as land a man on the most powerful country in Europe even though they're less than 20 miles away so you try to turn the second most powerful country in Europe into a satellite state so that they might cease trading with the first most powerful which would result in the first suing for peace...
>So with the support of basically the entire continent you invade and are decisively defeated because apparently the gulf between #2 (Russia) and maybe #3 (France) is so enormous support from Germany, Poland, Italy, Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands is not sufficient to ensure victory, well at-least not when your plan is obscenely arrogant and ill-conceived.

You want a source on Napoleon losing to England then surrendering?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo
You know Napoleon desperately wanted to invade England right? "Let us be masters of the Channel for six hours and we are masters of the world."
He sold over 500 million acres of land to the US to finance the endeavor. Ultimately he never even tried because that campaign would have been even more of an ignominious slaughter.

>When you can't so much as land a man on the most powerful country in Europe even though they're less than 20 miles away

Pretty sure the "most powerful country in Europe" was the one that conquered the entire continent, not the one that hid behind the sea until the war was over

>You want a source on Napoleon losing to England then surrendering?
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo

Hmmm, let me look at that closer

>Total Allied forces: 118,000 men
>Out of these, 68,000 men were under British command
>Out of these men under British command, 25,000 were British

So you have 25,000 Brits out of an Allied force of 118,000 men
And given that most of these Brits were Scottish, I doubt there were as much as 10,000 Englishmen in that battle
So much for an English victory

>When the British threatened to intervene on behalf of the Danes in the Second Schleswig War, Chancellor Bismarck simply replied "If the British Army landed in Europe, I'd get the Belgian police to arrest them"
Shittiest land army in Europe

>By the 1790's Britain had the best fleet
So you acknowledge the British didn't in fact have naval supremacy during the Revolutionary War?

Britain was a superpower, the only problem was it wasn't an uncontested superpower and could easily be overwhelmed if the other great powers of the day banded together against it.

>120k forces including 25k British and 50k Prussian soldiers
yeah he totally lost to England lmfao

Russia had already mobilized by the time of the war declaration, which was tantamount to a war declaration. Britain had threatened Belgium with war if they let Germany through, so Belgium was going to be raped either way. Britain also violated neutrality of countless nations by laying sea mines in neutral shipping lanes, and for a while there was a push in the USA for military escorts against both German and Royal navy interference, since the RN did not respect the neutrality of the US flag. I'd like to see them try that shit in this century.

Are you retarded?
In the 1700s and early 1800s, it was usually Britain that would band with other great powers to fight more powerful countries (namely France or Spain)
See War of Spanish Succession, Quadruple Alliance, Austrian Succession, French Revolutionary Wars, Napoleonic Wars...

Britain was a mere great power, and far from the strongest
Even before France and Spain joined the American Revolutionary War, the shitty British land army was already getting BTFO by rebels

umm, no sweetie that's not how it works

You sure showed him

Please leave.

kek, realize you're wrong so start talking about a completely different era?
Why would England maintain a large standing army? They had neutralized all threats on there landmass and had command of an indomitable navy, a large standing army would be a needless expense, liability and to be quite honest - a quintessential exhibition of pageantry autism that was far more common in countries with far more to prove.
Royal Highness, – Exposed to the factions which divide my country, and to the enmity of the great Powers of Europe, I have terminated my political career; and I come, like Themistocles, to throw myself upon the hospitality (m'asseoir sur le foyer) of the British people. I claim from your Royal Highness the protections of the laws, and throw myself upon the most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous of my enemies.

—Napoleon. (letter of surrender to the Prince Regent; translation).
The USA often forms coalitions to fight far less powerful entities and occasionally "losses" in the sense that they don't achieve they're strategic aims. They still were/are a superpower.
>Superpower is a term used to describe a state with a dominant position, which is characterised by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined-means of technological, cultural, military and economic strength, as well as diplomatic international relations and soft power influence.

>*something something if not Christianity we would be colonizing different universes by now*

>The USA often forms coalitions to fight far less powerful entities and occasionally "losses" in the sense that they don't achieve they're strategic aims. They still were/are a superpower.

Except if you look at these wars on the pics, most are defeats, and not Vietnam type of defeats, but conventional defeats on the battlefield
Also, Britain is never the leader or most powerful country in any of these coalitions (unlike the US in modern wars)

Thinking Britain was more powerful than France, Spain, Austria, Prussia or Russia in term of military might during the 18th century is just pure and utter ignorance
They had an okay navy that allowed them to match the stronger countries cited above in far off colonial wars, but it ends there

>kek, realize you're wrong so start talking about a completely different era?

Yes, an era during which, if anything, Britain was stronger than during the 18th century
So if even then they werent taken seriously, it tells you a lot about how they were seen in the 1700s

>pure and utter ignorance
>an okay navy
>to match the stronger countries
>match

The UK was weaker in the early 20th century than in the late 19th, the Kaiser had the same sort of dismissive, mistaking Britain's decision not to maintain a large standing army as an inability to do so.
Dreadnoughts don't have wheels, am I right?
*invents tanks, fighter aircraft, depth charges and sonar, mobilizes five million men and instill such a fear in the German navy that they sooner mutiny than go, like lambs to the abattoir, up against the royal navy*
As true genius Ludwig Wittgenstein said:
>"It seems to me as good as certain that we cannot get the upper hand against England. The English — the best race in the world — cannot lose! "
I can not help but notice that the dismissive arrogance with which Veeky Forums views Britain is not dissimilar to the attitude Napoleon had.

That is bullshit, there was not such thing as the guerrilla warfare until the spanish's war

>The UK was weaker in the early 20th century than in the late 19th

And weaker in the 18th century than both those
That being said, your comment was irrelevant as the famous quote "If the British army land, I'll have the Belgian police arrest them" isnt from the 20th century but from the late 19th, when Britain was at peak
The British army was, as a matter of fact, never a force to be reckoned with until halfway through WW1 (around 1917)

>invents tanks, fighter aircraft

Pretty sure France was the first country to have an air force and to use a machine gun on an aircraft
Brits invented tanks and that about that (and said tanks were so shit they had to be improved by other nations to become relevant)

>US
>Belligerent
Explain?

Quasi-War
Basically, Americans were greedy jews who used the fact France was at war with all Europe to suddenly cancel the debt they owed to them, so the French sent some civilian ships (privateers) attack the US Navy

The French should've never pulled the XYZ Affair.

And Americans shouldnt have behaved like a bunch of Greeks

The French navy used ships that the us sold them to attack American shipping so we had to rebuild our ocean going navy and fight them off

They really were tho

>some of the world's largest professional armies

>size/landmass directly reflect economic development and always mean fully populated land

Russia is the first example that comes to mind
>DUDE RUSSIA WAS SO BIG AND POWERFUL I MEAN LOOK AT IT'S LAND
>doesn't realize that Russia is barely inhabited or industrialized east of the Urals for most of it's history

G*rmans need to be purged, they're the greatest cancer to the human race

Napoleon surrendered to the British because just about every other power but the Austrians would have executed him.

>and successfully

This guy was still machine gunning brown people in India when the French Revolutionary War ended

And then he returned to quash their pathetic revolution

just because it wasn't called guerilla warfare until the Napoleonic wars doesn't mean it uses the same principles

>Battle of Quiberon Bay
One of my favourite naval battles.