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As a Brit, it pains me to see another Anglosphere country repeat the folly of throwing its empire away.
How much choice did the UK have? Genuinely curious, I don't know much about the history.
I’m genuinely not sure either, so this is thinking out loud.
On the ‘it had to happen’ side:
On the other side:
In general, the ‘it had to happen’ arguments seem stronger, but I’m not sure.
The ‘empire’ seen as one thing is the bad idea. India should surely have been jettisoned earlier; most African colonies were economically worthless. Elsewhere there were many more actual strategic mistakes.
I always heard that India was the one part of the empire that made a profit. Untrue?
In general, could you expand on your point a bit? I’m not sure I follow.
My guess wrt India would be that population wise the UK probably didn't have the capacity to keep it subjugated long-term, at least not without resorting to the sort of brutality that would have been diplomatically infeasible. But 2rafa is no doubt better placed than me to comment.
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It hurt me too until about a couple of hours ago. Honestly at this point , it can't come soon enough.
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