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British Imperial Influence

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The history of world is littered with empires and superpowers, from Macedonia to Mongolia, but only three can be said to have dominated world systems, namely the Dutch, British, and American. Beginning at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain was the foremost economic, political, and cultural power on earth. However, the Second World War marked the transition of British to American world leadership. Prior to the belligerency of the United States, the Second World War was a series of regional conflicts — Japan fighting China, Germany fighting France and Great Britain, Germany fighting the Soviet Union. It was not a single unified military entity. Nevertheless, most do not refer to it as several wars, although one easily could, but as …show more content…

The Fall of France had put their control of the Mediterranean and Middle East in jeopardy, as it left Britain without a major ally in Europe. They had military bases (Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria, Egypt) throughout the Mediterranean, which connected them to their oil pipelines in Iraq, but these came under threat from Axis powers. Italian imperial intentions were aimed at the mediterranean, Mussolini referred to it as “our sea,” harkening back to the Roman Empire. Being an Island, Britain’s “imperial highways” were vital to their economy. By mid-1941, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Albania were controlled by either Germany or Italy, granting them direct access to the Mediterranean — threatening Britain’s control of the Suez Canal. This endangered their shipping lanes to India and eastern interests. Reynolds holds, from the point of view of Churchill and the British “[the] Balkan campaigns in the spring of 1941 were therefore seen as part of a peripheral strategy to sever Britain’s imperial lifelines as a prelude to eventual invasion [of the British Isles] later that year.” Imperial setbacks only worsened as the war continued, German General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps disrupted British dominion in North Africa, with control of Libya and parts of Egypt going back and forth. Also, eastern interests were in danger from the Japanese menace. By early 1942, both Malaya and Singapore fell to Japan. Unprecedentedly, in India, Britain raise the largest volunteer army in the history of the world and effectively fought Japan. Raymond Callahan notes, “In 1939 about 400 of the 5,000 Indian Army officers commanding the 190,000-man Indian Army were Indians. By 1945 there were 14,000 Indian officers in the 2.5 million-man army – about one-third of the officer corps.” This significant transformation and the fact that “Indian soldiers expected freedom and self-government in the aftermath of victory,” continues Callahan,

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