Before the independence of the United States, it was also the British who discovered the new continent and immigrated there. It can be said that there is a shadow of Britain in every corner of the world, or it exists in the shadow of Britain. However, under the influence of the two world wars, the British empire, once known as the sun never sets, also had a sunset.
1, the erosion of Britain in the First World War
If the British Empire reached the peak of all countries in the world in the Victorian era, then the outbreak of World War I was the fuse for the British Empire to go into the sunset.
For Britain across the English Channel, World War I was watching the fire from the other bank, which had nothing to do with it. Subsequently, the British people were generally enthusiastic about it, and they didn't know enough about it, nor did they realize that it would affect the firmness of the British colonial system.
Unexpectedly, Germany soon occupied half of Europe, and Britain realized the seriousness of the war and quickly opened up a battlefield to fight with the Germans. In order to protect British sovereignty, Britain not only begged the support of the United States, but also relied on the support of its internal colonies. During World War I, British national finance and economy were fully militarized.
Due to the lack of raw materials caused by transportation difficulties, British exports decreased, and national industries gradually declined, and they could no longer make a comeback and lost the title of old empire.
Britain lost control of the colony.
The national sentiment of the British imperial colonies was triggered in World War I, and the internal regime of the empire was in turmoil. Therefore, on the one hand, Britain relies more and more on the support of European powers such as the United States to maintain the economic system in the empire, on the other hand, it begins to seek more autonomy rights at the other end of the colony and strive for sovereign independence to get rid of British control.
In wartime, in order to effectively gain the support of the dominion and colonies, Britain established the imperial wartime cabinet in 19 17, and its members were members of the British War Steering Committee, representatives of various ministries and the Prime Minister of the dominion. In this way, the status of the dominion was significantly improved, which laid the foundation for changing and adjusting the internal relations of the empire.
When Britain declared war on Germany, the British colonies also joined the war against Germany. With the stagnation of the war, the national independence consciousness of these colonies has been strengthened. These British colonies, like other sovereign countries, decided their own military deployment and actions independently, did not follow Britain, and demanded their own position at the Paris Peace Conference.
At the Paris Peace Conference, some resolutions were signed and voted in the form of independent sovereignty. For example, after the establishment of the League of Nations, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India became its members.
193 1 year, the imperial parliament passed the Westminster act, which described the colonial subordination within the empire in legal terms. In layman's terms, Britain lost this control over the colonies. These colonial countries showed a stronger sense of national independence, and the anti-British struggle began, which impacted Britain's hegemonic position.
If the hunger strike in India led by Gandhi is a rebellion for independence, then the symbol of Irish independence marks the curtain of the disintegration of the British Empire.
1, the attitude of British colonies towards Britain
The Second World War made the British colonies show their loyalty to Britain, and the participation in the war made their sovereign status clear in action. Germany, on the other hand, overestimates the role of centrifugal force in the Commonwealth and thinks that the understanding of British autonomy remains neutral, but the fact is that only Ireland remains neutral.
All the other dominions of Britain declared war on Germany within a week and used their resources to serve the British army, such as Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Canada took part in the war without hesitation and provided a lot of financial funds and service personnel to Britain. During World War II, the cooperation within the British Empire was much less than that during World War I. ..
Before the United States entered the war, the dominions wanted to know more about Britain's strategy and supply and demand plan. The local governments sent prime ministers to London to meet the wartime cabinet, and Australia and New Zealand were the most active.
World War II was a disaster for mankind. For British Asian colonies, the opportunity of autonomy or independence was the most important. Other colonies in British Asia basically assumed their own battlefields, and the Allies only provided them with materials and weapons. The war educated them, made them breed nationalism and began to realize the necessity of autonomy or independence.
2. British colonies are not controlled by Britain.
The victory of the allied forces in World War II intensified the sense of independence of the British colonies, and as a result, they began to demand independence in an all-round way and get rid of British control. During World War II, Britain and the United States carried out propaganda and education on British colonies for their own interests, and formed a world anti-fascist alliance against Germany. These colonial people went to the battlefield, their ideology gradually improved, and they realized the illegal behavior of one nation ruling and squeezing another.
As a result, the two world wars did not bring glory and neutrality to the British empire, but trained grave diggers for themselves. In the African battlefield of the world war, black soldiers fought side by side with the allies. Through long-term contact with other white races, they began to realize that all human beings are equal, and there is no racial hierarchy such as skin color. The war made these people realize that they had been enslaved by Britain for so many years. It is a natural consciousness to stand up and fight, and it is an instinct to get rid of the control of the British Empire.
During the war, Britain's control over the colonies has been gradually liberalized, and the industry and agriculture of the colonies have developed greatly. The strengthening of the comprehensive national strength of the colony further aggravated the idea of the colony leaving the British Empire. Germany and Italy carried out global propaganda on the colonies with a supportive attitude, which further promoted the determination and action of the British colonies.
Germany, Italy and other western countries tried their best to win over British colonies, using their dissatisfaction with British colonial rule to express some support for their independence requirements in material and international status, so as to disintegrate British national strength and take away the hegemony of the British empire.
1, two world wars consumed national strength.
Although Britain has always maintained the image of a winner in World War II, due to the serious consumption of World War II and the diseases left over from World War I, Britain suffered heavy losses and the country's economic strength declined sharply.
During the war, Britain's wartime military expenditure was almost impossible to maintain on its own, accounting for three-quarters of Britain's GDP, and the rest relied entirely on the assistance of British colonies and the United States, and its dependence was increasing. To some extent, this limited and weakened Britain's ability to respond quickly to the anti-British struggle of its dominions and colonies. In desperation, it had to gradually relax its control over the colony and gradually lose its control over the colony.
In addition, Britain's status as an ally "banker" and the status of the pound as a world currency require Britain to provide funds for the war expenditure of the allies. Shortly after the war broke out, three of the five countries that mainly fought against Germany needed foreign loans.
This kind of loan not only failed to gain income, but caused huge losses. This is because when Britain borrowed money from foreign countries and their colonies during the war, it was actually that the borrowing country converted its own or other countries' demand for goods and services into bonds, and these bonds enjoyed the lien on the profits of the borrowing country due to its future productivity and services.
Unfortunately, most of Britain's foreign loans during the war were lent to countries that were difficult to recover after the war, so Britain lost all these loans, principal and interest.
2. The international status is declining.
After the end of World War II, it was clearly stipulated in the purposes of the Charter of the United Nations that the principle of respecting the equal legal rights of people all over the world and the right to make national decisions in their own countries should be respected.
The colonial rule of the British Empire lost its centripetal force, which aggravated the backward pace in the era of global integration. In addition, at present, Britain's national strength is greatly insufficient and it has to rely on the support of the United States and other western countries. It is helpless for colonial independence, and because it owes too much to its allies in the war, such as the United States and the Soviet Union, it can only submit to humiliation.
Shortly after the end of the European War, the British Labor Party won the general election and returned to power. After the Labor government came to power, it proved a series of political changes in the British Empire by reorganizing the administrative organs and changing its name. Although the thin camel is bigger than the horse, the glory of Britain's former empire has disappeared.
If World War I only left the central position of Europe on the surface, World War II made Britain withdraw from the hegemonic position of world politics once and for all. The outbreak of World War II dealt the British Empire the heaviest blow, and Britain lost its old empire.
The Yalta system defined the basic framework of the bipolar pattern of the United States and the Soviet Union, excluding Britain, an empire that never fell. If it hadn't been for the repeated insistence of British Prime Minister Churchill, the British colony in the Far East would have fallen.
After the impact of two world wars, the British Empire could never regain its former hegemony. It became a great empire because of the war, and it had to quit the stage of the old empire because of the war. It's really thirty years in Hedong and thirty years in Hexi.
References:
The disintegration of the British Empire
Imperial sunset
Memoirs of Aidan