World War One. 1914-18
This was a European war started by Germany with England coming in to help France. The Turkish Ottoman Empire which ruled the whole of the Middle East as far as Iraq, including Syria and Palestine, came in on the German side. The English were supported by their formidable Empire but still needed the Americans to come and help in 1918 to break the stalemate and help the English win. After the war the Ottoman Empire was split up between the English and the French with the English taking Iraq and Palestine and the French Syria and Lebanon. Again the French obtained nothing of importance and the English obtained Iraqi (and Iranian) oil and Palestine into which it supported and aided a return of the Jews.

The English or British Empire was now at its maximum but the eyes of the British brown and black subjects had been opened as they had observed during the war how they were second class subjects but were clearly not intellectually inferior to the average English Tommy.

World War Two 1939-45
This was indeed a world war. The English had lost their total domination of industrial and military strength so necessary if it was to maintain the control and leadership of such a huge empire. New nations to worry the English were the Germans and the Japanese. The Germans, the English knew, were at least equal to the British in military might. The English also knew the Japanese had territorial ambitions which included the British eastern strongholds like Australia for space and agriculture, Malay for rubber and indeed India The English totally underestimated the Japanese military machine. Fortunately for the English the Japanese also had eyes on the American controlled Philippines. The Australians were terrified that the English would defend England first, India second, Malay third and Australia last and sort a new defence relationship with the powerful but dormant USA. The English were the only European nation to stand up and fight the massive German blitzkriegs (a combination of air and tank assaults). The English people in "their finest hour" defeated the German air invasion in the "Battle of Britain". (The English were not out numbered by German Aircraft but almost ran out of anybody who could fly a plane.) In the East the Japanese easily overran the lightly or poorly defended British outposts with battleships, fighter planes and a ruthless well trained army. By 1941 the once mighty England were bankrupt and were standing alone against Fascist Germany (and Italy) who were expanding in Europe, North Africa and potentially eastwards into English held territories like Egypt, Iraq and Iran towards the "Jewel in the Crown" India. Simultaneously England were standing against Japan's territorial ambitions which included not only China but also much of Britain's eastern empire. Churchill tried to persuade the Americans to help but they were reluctant to be dragged into a war which they thought had nothing to do with them and which would prop up the English Empire which they did not approve of. The Americans did provide food and arms on credit but not manpower. Fortunately for England and the British Empire and of course France and the rest of non Nazi Europe the Germans torpedoed American supply ships and the Japanese in a daring pre-emptive strike knocked out much of America's Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbour (Hawaii). America at this time were not the dominant force they are in the early 21st century and had armaments no better than England's, Germany or Japan but they had the mass manufacturing capabilities to build planes, tanks and ships very quickly. It took 4 years to force the Germans and the Japanese to surrender and the allies (the whole of the British Empire plus America) needed the help of the rapidly improving Russian military to destroy Germany's eastern flank and the invention of the Atomic Bomb to cause the Japanese to submit. It was a close call.

1946 The British Empire is dead but it refuses to lie down. There was no respite for the exhausted and bankrupt English. Initially the Americans refused to have anything to do with supporting England in regaining authority in its wavering empire. They were particularly concerned with the obvious poor treatment of Indian, African, Arab, Burmese, Malay and Chinese (or non Anglo Saxon white Protestant) members of the British armed forces who had served so gallantly in the war but had been treated as second class citizens by the arrogant and superior Brits. Communism and the Cold War.

This was all to change as it soon became obvious that Stalin (Russia) was about to try and expand his Communist ideology worldwide. In Europe, already ensconced in Eastern Germany, he created a continuous "Communist Block" all the way to Russia and the "Iron Curtain" was erected. In the rest of the world the wavering British Empire was his next goal. India and Pakistan, (who gained their independence from England in 1948) were obvious targets. India courted the Soviets but Pakistan remained with the West as measured by where they purchased their arms. Burma and Malay now Malaysia were overrun with communist ideology. Similarly the British Empire in Africa and the oil rich, British influenced Iraq and Iran, were soon to be courted by Stalin. The American policy to England changed overnight as they realised that Britain and the Empire must stand against the rapid ideological spread of Communism. The most obvious example of this was in the Suez Canal Zone which became the largest centre of military power in the world hosting American B 39 bombers from where they could drop their deadly nuclear bombs on the now nuclear armed Russia. The Cold War had commenced.

The attraction of Communism 50 years ago is similar to Islam today, a perceived alternative for the poor against an arrogant, wealthy, unfair, capitalist West. It took 40 years to demonstrate to their adherents that Marxists ideologies are not as successful as Capitalism in producing wealth.

In the mean time the English were generally successful in keeping the Communist ideology at bay in their territories even though nearly all members of the worlds biggest empire was choosing independence to be replaced in many places by a loose confederation called the Commonwealth, held together by a common ideology of freedom and fairness under the rule of law, under the young British Queen, Elizabeth 2nd.

INDIA
For those who have not read the general story of the development of the British Empire some of the important elements outside India have been included here.

1600 CHRISTIAN EUROPEANS ESTABLISH TRADING POSTS IN INDIA
The foundations of the British Empire and the English-India story.
The English ended up with the largest empire in the world, rather than the competing and originally more powerful French, Spanish, Portuguese or Dutch. The "Jewel in the English Crown" was India. How was this achieved when all of the above listed European countries were trying to do the same thing and at the time the key players were more powerful than the English. France in particular, in the early years, was economically stronger and with a much larger population. (England 7 million, France 20 million c1650.) The answer was the British Navy and a better banking system-Jewish. At the end of the day it came down to a hundred year dual, normally called the 7 Years War, between England and France and little England won each key battle. (Not to be confused with the earlier 100 years war, 1337-1453, between England and France when the English tried and almost succeeded in retrieving much of the land in France which Norman English Kings had originally ruled but subsequently neglected.)

First steps
The Americas were the first lands colonised by Europeans, purely by chance in fact, as the explorers did not know the Americas existed. They were sailing west to find new routes to, China for silks and porcelain and to Java, Indonesia for spices. The shorter routes east were blocked by the hated and feared Islamic Ottoman Turks from about 1400.

Spain was the first off the mark west, financed by the Christian anti Jewish fanatics, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella commencing of course with Columbus. (Probably an Italian-Genoese Jew but financed by the Spanish royal family.) The Spanish at this time were the most powerful nation in Europe but were barbaric plunderers, not colonialists. They eliminated the established cultures in Mexico and South America while they stole their silver and gold. The Role of the English was almost as barbaric, being "the pirates of the Atlantic". Hiding in the Caribbean, they high-jacked much of the stolen gold from the Spanish ships. (The gold from one Spanish ship could double the normal annual income to the king's purse.) The first colonising ventures of the English (who followed the Portuguese by 100 years) was the building of sugar plantations in the Caribbean using slaves as labour, initially English or Irish but they could not stand the heat, then Negros purchased in Africa. Virginia in North America followed soon after, with people like Sir Walter Raleigh creating organised tobacco plantations. (1584-89). At exactly the same time Europeans were following the sea routes discovered by Portuguese explorer, Vasco de Gamma, to India via South Africa and were setting up trading posts in the Indian sea ports when Indians were ruled by the highly sophisticated Islamic Mughals. (From 1526) The British East India Company was set up in Calcutta, east India, in 1600 and the Dutch equivalent in 1602. (The French followed 50 years later)

For the English to achieve simultaneous domination of both North America and India it was the French who had to be removed from both countries. In fairness to the French, they had equal interest in land battles in Continental Europe, (France wanted to conquer both Spain and the German- Austrian Hapsburg Empire) whereas as we have seen elsewhere on this site, after Henry 8th , the English gave up land retrieval in Europe and concentrated on keeping European Roman Catholic Christians at bay by building up a world beating Navy. The Dutch threat was removed when in 1689, the English who asked William of Orange, the Protestant Dutch Grandson of England's Charles 1st to become King of England. After this period the Dutch concentrated their South East Asia efforts in Indonesia.