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British Conquests Worldwide · Acedra
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this video is made possible by curiositystream watch all of my videos early and ad free or watch my upcoming original series exclusively on nebula which you can get access to for 15 a year through the bundle deal at curiositystream.com real life lore for a good chunk of the past few centuries this music was the final boss music played for people across the entire world the english and later the british have been responsible for invading and conquering more countries and people
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than any other nation in human history and honestly it's startling just how many places they've been to in this video i'm going to do my best at attempting to visualize all of britain's invasions and conquests for you continent by continent in as brief a time as possible so let's begin with the closest continent to britain europe ireland was the first target of british conquest and was invaded as early as 1169. within 400 years of gradual conquests the entire island was ruled by the british
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and remained that way until most of it was granted independence in 1921. historically france has probably been invaded by the english more times than any other country in the world just take a look at this huge list of invasions there's not even enough time to talk about a third of these and for a time all of this territory inside of modern france was directly controlled by the english with kalei being the final piece that fell in 1557 well except for that time when the
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british took over corsica for a couple years the british continue to invade spain by the millions every winter but in the past they've come with a lot less friendly intentions english and later british soldiers invaded under the black prince in 1367 and continued on through the first second third and fourth raids on cadiz and that time when the british took over gibraltar and menorca they gave menorca back but decided on keeping gibraltar forever in recent history the british have
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invaded belgium in order to support the belgians but that wasn't always the case they conducted two pretty large scale invasions of modern day belgium in 1654 and again in 1701 and flanders itself was ruled by the english for a few years in the 14th century the netherlands was one of england's historical archrivals and so there's been plenty of invasions going in this direction across the 17th and 18th centuries in 1940 the british technically invaded and took over iceland peacefully for a year
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in order to prevent it from falling into the hands of the germans but this was heavily protested by the icelandic government at the time so in my books it still counts as an invasion italy of course was invaded by the british army during the second world war as well in 1943 but there were plenty of invasions before then dating back to richard the lionheart's invasion in 1190. germany too was obviously invaded by the british army in 1945 and northwestern germany was occupied by the british for
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three years until 1948 but a lot of german territory was ruled by britain long before then the islands of heligland were british for most of the 19th century and the kingdom of hanover was effectively ruled under a personal union for over a century between 1714 and 1837. austria was also invaded in 1945 and the southwest of the country was occupied for a decade norway was invaded in 1810 and 1812 during the napoleonic wars when it was a part of denmark norway because
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denmark was alliant to france so obviously denmark was invaded during that time as well finland estonia and latvia were all briefly invaded by small units during the crimean war against russia because they were all part of the russian empire at the time and of course russia itself was invaded then too as well as in 1918 when the british took over a large chunk of northern russia for a time in their fight against the bolsheviks the territory of modern ukraine was
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invaded by british army units during the crimean war the british took over the croatian island of this between 1807 and 1814 during their fight against napoleon the british army had boots and guns on the ground in bosnia recently between 1992 and 95 fighting against the bosnian serbs and around the same time the raf also carried out bombing strikes against serbian serb targets in serbia in 1999. montenegro was briefly blockaded and invaded in 1913 during the first balkan war
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the british owned the westernmost ionian islands of greece between 1815 and 1863 before they gave them back while bulgaria was invaded and almost entirely occupied by the british army between 1918 and 1919 at the end of world war one cyprus was a british protectorate between 1878 and 1914 when they decided to just outright annex it to piss off the turks and it remained annexed until 1960 except for two small chunks that are still british today turkey itself was massively invaded by
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the british during world war 1 and part of it was occupied between 1919 and 1923 that wraps up europe so let's move on to asia next modern day israel and palestine as well as jordan were british controlled from the end of world war 1 to 1948 and 1946 respectively lebanon and syria were both occupied from the fishy french government briefly during world war ii iraq was ruled between 1919 and 1932 and invaded again during the second world war and again in 1991 and again in 2003
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kuwait was a colony for over 60 years until 1966 georgia and azerbaijan were both invaded and occupied right at the end of world war one for a year iran has been invaded at least three times with the most notable example being the joint anglo-soviet invasion of 1941 turkmenistan was invaded in 1918 to prevent bolshevik influence from spreading any further afghanistan is a favorite british invasion spot since it's been invaded in 1839 1878 1919 and again in 2001.
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qatar bahrain the united arab emirates and oman were all controlled by the british until the early 1970s while a chunk of yemen was controlled for over a century between 1839 and 1967. india pakistan bangladesh and sri lanka were all of course invaded many times and outright ruled by the british empire in parts for nearly two centuries between 1757 and 1947. nepal was invaded in 1814 but never successfully conquered bhutan was invaded in 1772 and again in 1864 and was sort of
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conquered as a protectorate between 1910 and 1948. burma slash myanmar was invaded in 1826 and was definitely successfully conquered and ruled through 1947. thailand was briefly invaded in 1945 since they were allied to japan in world war ii and so was vietnam in the same year but that was to support the french government against the growing independence movement malaysia and singapore were each conquered and ruled up until the 1950s and 1960s brunei was conquered and ruled up until the 1980s
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whereas the philippines were briefly invaded during the seven years war china got invaded a lot and hong kong was a colony until as recently as 1997 and while not outright invaded part of japan was occupied following world war ii between 1946 and 1952 and finally indonesia was invaded a bunch during the napoleonic war since it was a dutch colony alliance to france at the time next up oceania australia and new zealand of course were invaded by the british and established as colonies that
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each gained independence in 1931. papua new guinea was also a british colony for a time as were the island countries of fiji kiribati the solomon islands tuvalu and vanuatu let's move back over to africa next which the british have violently visited a lot in terms of just places the british outright colonized after invasions there's the gambia sierra leone ghana nigeria egypt sudan south sudan uganda kenya tanzania zambia malawi zimbabwe botswana namibia and south africa along with parts of
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modern day somalia and guinea senegal was briefly invaded and had some of their coastline taken over in the 1700s while during the second world war the british invaded the french colonies of djibouti madagascar and komaros after they aligned themselves with the nazi vichy regime and the italian colonies of libya eritrea and ethiopia although they had also invaded ethiopia much earlier in 1868 and as german colonies right before world war 1 the british also invaded togo and cameroon without
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annexing them afterwards for the final area of the world left to discuss let's move over to the americas all of canada was a british colony until 1931 while newfoundland remained until 1949. the united states of course was a colony until 1776 and was invaded again in 1812 and the modern states of oregon and washington were claimed right up until 1846. as far as other outright british colonies here go there was the bahamas jamaica belize grenada saint vincent and the grenadines barbados st
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lucia dominica antigua and barbuda saint kitts and nevis trinidad and tobago and guyana besides colonies cuba was invaded and occupied during the seven years war in 1762. haiti was invaded in 1793 during the french revolutionary wars the dominican republic was invaded way back in 1655 in an attempt at conquest under oliver cromwell parts of the east coast of honduras and nicaragua were conquered and ruled for nearly two centuries until 1819. they sent the navy
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to invade mexico in 1861 to force them to repay some debts and during the splendidly named war of jenkins year aka the more lame sounding war of the austrian succession the british invaded a lot of spain's colonies including panama a huge one into colombia and ultimately peru in 1796 the british took over suriname because it was a dutch colony and they were allied with a revolutionary french and later napoleon they also invaded martinique and guadeloupe because
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they actually were french during the napoleonic wars venezuela was invaded in 1902 as part of the so-called venezuela crisis to force the country to repay some debts they had defaulted on kind of like mexico while argentina and uruguay were both invaded during the napoleonic wars as well in 1806 when spain and her colonies were still allied with napoleon and that pretty much sums up all of the territory the british have ever ruled and all of the countries the small island has ever
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invaded there are a total of 65 countries today who celebrate their independence days from the british empire the empire used to rule over a quarter of all the world's land at the same time and was the biggest empire in human history and in total today there have been 117 modern countries that have been aggressively invaded by the british armed forces during some point in their histories representing a total of 60 percent of all the world's nations which is almost the same number of
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countries that you can watch this video in youtube is available in 130 countries now or about two-thirds of them but the algorithm that youtube uses won't always work the way you think or want it to it determines which videos succeed which ones don't and which ones you end up seeing recommended but it doesn't always line up with the kinds of videos i'm producing here that i think you guys will end up enjoying watching so that's why a big group of my educational creator friends and i
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joined forces to create nebula our own video streaming platform where none of us have to worry about things like demonetization video length or algorithms which means we can all be entirely focused on simply creating awesome content that you'll enjoy watching all of my real-life videos go up at least 24 hours early before they do here on youtube and all without any kinds of ads or sponsorships plus there's fantastic nebula originals like money a game show hosted by tom scott and
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featuring a bunch of my creator friends in a series of psychological experiments that test their willingness to work together and my upcoming series ghost towns featuring various abandoned places from around the world all of which you can only get on nebula the best way to get access to nebula is with the curiosity stream bundle curiosity stream is of course a spectacular streaming service with thousands of top quality documentaries on every subject you can imagine
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from history to nature to science and more and they've partnered with us at nebula to offer a fantastic deal when you sign up for curiosity stream you'll also get a free annual subscription to nebula and right now it's only fifteen dollars for an entire year which is about the same as a month for most other streaming services you can get that bundle by clicking the link in the description or by going to curiositystream.com real life lore and as always thank you for watching
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