Comment by roenxi
7 hours ago
The British Empire controlled something like ~20% of the world and other European powers were adding in 10% here and there. Probably more than that weighted by economic and military strength. It is kinda on the British elite that the world wars even started. Even with the most charitable read we're talking about a situation where the message was "lets not break the power of Europe" and they couldn't sell it to Europe.
The world wars were a crisis that caused change, but that is a bit like going bankrupt. Just because the crisis is fast doesn't stop the process being slow.
> Even with the most charitable read we're talking about a situation where the message was "lets not break the power of Europe" and they couldn't sell it to Europe.
That feels like retrofitting a modern frame onto a very different situation? I don't think any of the European elites thought in terms of "the power of Europe" as any kind of unified front vs the rest of the world until after they lost the world wars. It was intra-European conflict as it always had been. England/France/Germany(+)/Spain/Austria against each other; those elites that were unhappy with the fallout of the last great redistribution of power at the Treaty of Utrecht.
(there's probably a chunk of history I'm missing as to how Russia went from enemy of Britain at the Crimean war in the 1850s to the ally in the Triple Entente which caused France and Britain to go to war with Austria-Hungary; but WW1 is definitely not the fault of the any kind of British elite, we can blame it on the Austrians and, of course, the Serbs and ultimately one guy with a gun)
The rest of the world wasn't conceived of as independent powers until the Russo-Japanese war. They were prizes to be allocated among the (European) players. At that time, it was even conceivable that the European powers might take and divide China as they had done with Africa and India.
(+) strictly, Prussia; remember German and Italian unification happened during the Victorian era.
Ww1 and ww2 had a lot to do with Germans lusting after British Imperial greatness (having missed out on large colonization due to lack of national cohesion prior to 1870)