The British Imperial Establishment, Post Imperial Era, and the ‘Churchillian’ World View, 1945-2016. (Adjustments & Challenges in Contemporary British Diplomatic Strategy)

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and of
some anxiety to flex whatever military or economic muscle she might be
able to develop.

The
British were late-comers in the phenomenon of European expansion
that had characterised the previous four
centuries of world history. “When the
first colony was established in Virginia in 1607 the English
trailed the Portuguese
and the Spaniards in colonial expansion by about one hundred years. In
later
centuries, however, the British not only subdued local leaders in America, Asia,
Africa and
the Pacific but also vanquished their European rivals, the Spanish,
Portuguese, Dutch, and held at bay
other imperialist competitors such as the
Germans, Russians and Americans.” 2

By
the end of the sixteenth century the English were set upon a course of
imperial expansion, so that by the
1930s they covered, as our earlier studies have
shown, over a quarter of the world’s land and
embraced a quarter of mankind.
Although initially it was the feeling of being threatened that induced the
English
to flex their military and economic muscles against other powers, as time
progressed it
became the greed of merchants. The British (“The name changed
from England to Britain in 1707 and to
the United Kingdom in 1801”3) needed to
secure markets for
themselves and therefore had to increase their world role
effectively over the centuries.

“International power, by its nature relative rather than absolute, is not
easily measured. There
are moral and spiritual ingredients which cannot be
tabulated; as Churchill observed when recounting the
celebrated remark, ‘The
Pope! how many divisions does he have?’ , Stalin might have borne in mind
the
considerable number not immediately visible on parade. Among the tangible
elements which make up
the strength of the state are its armed forces, the will to
use them and their suitability for the most
likely task; defensibility of frontiers
and lines of communication; its alliances; economic and financial
services;

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