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10 Ways Britain Has Ruined the World

Phil Moore









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Irish Potato Famine

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Invention of the Machine Gun







Atlantic Slave Trade

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Opium Wars

11-Opium War






Scramble for Africa









Adolph Hitler         and     Neville Chamberlain

In March 1935, Hitler established a general military draft and declared the “unequal” Versailles Treaty disarmament clauses null and void; some European leaders appeared to understand the danger, and warned him against future aggressive actions.

The emerging united front against Hitler quickly collapsed. Britain adopted a policy of “appeasement,” granting Hitler possibly everything he could want in order to avoid war. The last chance to stop the Nazis without world war came in March 1936, when Hitler suddenly marched his armies into the demilitarized Rhineland, brazenly violating the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno. An uncertain France would not move without British support; and the British refused to act.

The years that followed led to a far stronger Germany. In 1936, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact. At the same time, Germany and Italy intervened in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Their support helped the Spanish fascists defeat Republican Spain. In 1938, Hitler threatened to invade Austria, and thereby forced the Austrian chancellor to put local Nazis in control of the government. The next day, German armies moved in unopposed, and Austria became part of Greater Germany.

Simultaneously, Hitler began demanding that the German-minority area of western Czechoslovakia—called the Sudetenland—be turned over to Germany. In September 1938, British Prime Minister Chamberlain went to Germany to negotiate with the Nazis. The British and French agreed with Hitler that the Sudetenland should be ceded to Germany immediately. Hitler’s armies eventually occupied the remainder of the Czechoslovakia, in 1939.  For Hitler everything was set on September 1, 1939, German armies invaded Poland, and Britain and France finally declared war on Germany. The Second World War had begun; in the next six years more than fifty million people would lose their lives.

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The Industrial Revolution


The Industrial Revolution began in England during the 1780s, and started to influence continental Europe and the rest of the world after 1815. It profoundly modified much of the human experience. It changed the patterns of work, transformed the social class structure, and altered the international balance of political and military power, giving added impetus to the ongoing European expansion into non-European lands. The Industrial Revolution also helped ordinary people attain a higher standard of living. But industrialization would have terrible consequences for much of the world.

Factory owners became very rich during the Industrial Revolution, while factory workers lived in soul-crushing poverty. Cities grew around factories, often rapidly and without proper town-planning. This often meant that there was no sufficient sewage, running water, or sanitation systems. Ironically, “slums” first originated in Britain, where crowded and filthy settlements were breeding grounds for diseases such as cholera. Factory work was difficult and dangerous, with typical shifts lasting between twelve and sixteen hours. Owners hired women and children because they knew they could pay them less; they worked in the same dangerous factories, for the same long hours.

Aside from the way workers were treated, the industrial revolution had many awful long-term consequences. During the twentieth century, thanks in part to the new world system created by the industrial revolution, the world population would take on huge proportions—growing to six billion people just before the start of the twenty-first century (it has now already surpassed seven billion).

That’s a four hundred percent population increase in a single century. This has put severe strain on the resources available on the Earth. It was coal—a fossil fuel—which packed the furnaces of the industrialization that helped propel human progress to extraordinary levels. But of course this came with extraordinary costs for our environment, and to the wellbeing of all living things. The releasing of fossil fuels into the atmosphere has put mankind into a titanic struggle against climate change, global warming, and the threat of extreme weather.




After defeating the Ottoman Empire in World War One, Great Britain did not liberate their Arab allies but instead colonized them. The British received Palestine, Jordan, and Iraq. After centuries of anti-Semitism, many Jews began migrating to their original homeland of Palestine (ancient Judaea), and after the War, these migrations greatly increased. Many British officials, some of whom were also anti-Semitic, wanted to establish a Jewish homeland in the Middle East in order to kick the Jews out of Europe altogether.

The British announced in 1947 their intention to withdraw from Palestine in 1948. On November 1947 the United Nations General Assembly passed a plan to partition Palestine into two separate states—one Arab, and one Jewish. The Jews accepted, but the Arabs rejected the partition. The British officially left on May 14, 1948, without providing a resolution to the situation; that same day the Jews proclaimed the state of Israel. Arab countries immediately attacked the new Jewish state, but the Israelis drove off the invaders and conquered more territory. Roughly nine hundred thousand Arab refugees fled—or were expelled from—old Palestine.

This war left an enormous legacy of Arab bitterness towards Israel and its political allies, Great Britain and the United States. The Arab-Palestinian conflict has provided a deep divide between East and West, and between Christianity and Judaism on the one hand and Islam on the other hand. The modern “War on Terror” stems from the American and Western support of Israel. In addition, Israel has been accused of atrocities ranging from bulldozing Palestinian homes, to acts of terror committed by Mossad, the Israeli CIA.


Partition of India

Wagah Border 2030304

After two centuries of colonialism in India, the British Labour government agreed to a speedy independence of India after 1945. But conflict between Hindu and Muslim nationalists led to murderous clashes between the two communities in 1946. When it became clear that the Muslim League would accept nothing less than an independent Pakistan, India’s last viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, proposed partition. Both sides accepted, and at the “stroke of midnight” on August 14, 1947, one fifth of humanity gained political independence.

Yet independence through partition brought tragedy. In the weeks afterwards, communal strife exploded into an orgy of massacres and mass expulsions. Hundreds of thousands of Hindus and Muslims were slaughtered, and an estimated five million made refugees. Indian Congress Party leaders were completely powerless to stop the violence. “What is there to celebrate?” exclaimed Gandhi in reference to the much-sought independence; “I see nothing but rivers of blood.” In January 1948, Gandhi himself was gunned down by a Hindu fanatic who believed that he was too lenient on Muslims.

After the ordeal of independence, relations between India and Pakistan remain tense to this day. Fighting over the disputed area of Kashmir continued until 1949, and broke out again in 1965-1966, 1971, and 1999. What makes the Indo-Pakistani conflict even more dangerous is that both sides contain nuclear weapons. With the possibility that Pakistan might become a failed state, there is a good chance of a major genocide erupting in the twenty-first century.

Phil Moore is a History Major and filmmaker, who seeks to enlighten the world.
