It’s why the success rate of empires is, as of yet, Zero. Because vast territory is very difficult to supply and easily susceptible to attack.
I’d say it has more to do with the people’s in those Empires no longer wanting to be ruled by other people, and/or a lack of will from the ‘head’ nation to send people out to die for territory that holds nothing but prestige and offers no real returns. The military threat from the outside is just one factor.
I would say that one thing which has almost never historically worked is the ‘rapid’ building of an Empire. An Empire must be built up step by step with strong controls on all aspects rather than just military. Almost every attempt throughout history by one people to rapidly expand has met with disaster, since rapid expansion brings with it a rapid increase in enemies. Examples of this are the German’s/Japanese in WW2, France during the Napoleonic wars, and even as far back as Alexander the Great’s Empire, which expanded rapidly and then after his death crumbled almost as rapidly.
Examples of ‘successful’ Empires would be the Roman (their military and social organisation was exceptional, as was the political setup that backed it) and the British (Australia/Canada, etc, as well as a democratic and united India are testaments to it’s legacy). I would also say the Spanish/Portuguese Empires did ok, except that they had a habit of asset-stripping their territories, and the home nations were poorly organised.
I think that one of the greatest things Empires did, and something which has been forgotten in the modern politically correct world, is unite people and thread a link through disparate and distant parts of the world. Each successive period of Empire grew in distance due to technology and knowledge, and this has spread things (like technology) around the globe. We live in a globalised world today because we have reached the top of a ladder built by a series of Empires. Whenever each Empire came into conflict with each other, then the smartest/strongest survived and came to dominate the era, when their power ebbed the world took what they had learned from them and moved on… until no one nation was really that far advanced over any other. To put it another way; we know what we know only because Imperialism carried knowledge around the world.
The exception for the modern world is China still squatting in Tibet, something which the western world should have done something about when it happened.
i don’t think so, some of them may have surrendered like the french and had a few units that went on to fight with the japs, but i do not think they had any actual allies. All the other countries really hated the japs back then (and quite a bit now still), and I really can not blame them either, as the japanese were more ruthless than the germans or russians had ever been. The Japs attempted genocide on every chinese population center they controlled, the only thing that prevented there from being another holocaust was that the japs were complete disorganized and that the genocide was perpetrated from the ground up instead of being orders from the top down.
True, and the Japanese are still a highly racist people who will not allow immigration, yet oddly, we think it’s cute or interesting because they aren’t white. People seem to love their eccentric culture, which is to be some kind of twisted hybrid of Western culture and ancient Japanese culture filtered through the lens of a schizophrenic people. We think it makes them unique. Yes, and Britain would seem just that unique it they didn’t allow any one who wasn’t white to settle there, but would we be as forgiving?
