- England rules ¼ of the whole of the earth and about ¼ of it’s people.
- Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa added to existing jewels like India (including Pakistan and Bangladesh)
- The whole of Africa is split up and ruled by countries in Europe (including England)
- The English having massacred a fifty million Buffalo in
America not to mention many North American natives (Indians) follow
these atrocities by killing for “sport” some half a million native
Australians (Aborigines) and replacing them with 3 million “white” men,
12 million cattle and 100 million sheep.
- At home women finally are allowed to vote!
- The First so called World War
Africa
Some 100 years ago the Europeans who for the last
few hundred years had been fighting each other in Europe, then North
America and the Far East pounced on Africa. Hardly anybody was left
out.
The French started with foot holds in Muslim Algeria and the English
notably aided by Cecil Rhodes expanded their “shared” foothold in South
Africa (Shared with the Afrikaners who were originally Dutch (and
French) extreme Protestants called Huguenots who had fled religious
persecution at home).
The Belgium’s hired English explorer David Livingstone to help them “take” the Congo region.
Of
the countries involved (England, France, Germany, Portugal, Spain and
Italy) it was only Italy who were beaten by the locals. (Abyssinians
now Ethiopians in the Horn of Africa)
These European countries held a conference (the scramble for
Africa) in Berlin in 1884 on how to split up Africa between them. The
Africans were not invited to this meeting!!
France ended up with the most land with England in second place. As far
as the English were concerned the French could keep their land as they
had ended up with “a huge desert with insignificant minerals occupied
by Muslim fundementalsts”. Whereas the English largly thanks to the
ruthless homosexual Rhodes ruled the beautiful countries in the south
of Africa where they found some of the worlds largest deposits of Gold
and Diamonds. England also ruled Nigeria on the west coast (full of
oil) and Christian/Muslim Arabic Egypt and Sudan in the north.
English victories were made easier by the English inventor
Maxim who produced the worlds first machine gun. A convenient tool for
annihilating a few local “Blacks” who were not immediately attracted to
giving their lands to the English invaders from overseas.
The English ended up by ruling from south to north;
South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe (then called Rhodesia after Cecil
Rhodes), Zambia, (not Tanzania this went to the Germans), Kenya,
Uganda, and the Muslim/Christian areas Sudan and Egypt; plus Nigeria on
the west coast.
100 years ago the English, the world conquering nation, were
shattered to be beaten in battle by the Afrikaners in the Boer War.
(Boar being the Afrikaner word for farmer)
Australia and New Zealand
These territories were discovered
and mapped by Europeans notably Englishman James Cook some 250 years
ago 1768. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was 100 years ahead of Cook
but the Dutch appeared to have no interest in the land. Here was a land
of similar size to the USA (USA 3.8 million sq. miles Australia 3.0 m.
sq. miles) that was inhabited by humans who had apparently not seen any
other humans ever since they arrived some 35,000 years ago. Called
Aborigines they were still stone age peoples who had not even invented
the wheel. English settlers massacred ¾ of them.
As with America the English initially used Australia as a penal
colony (To clear the overflow from London prisons). Free English
settlement started about 1850 when gold was discovered.
100 years ago when Australia grew from a colony to a dominion within
the British Empire the half a million native Australians were replaced
by 3.5 million Europeans, 12 million cattle and 100million sheep.
Australia was given “Dominion” status along with New Zealand
Canada and South Africa which permitted local government rather than
government from London, the English Queen remained their queen and the
English military was in theory available to defend their territories.
Technology 100 years ago
This is really the start of modern
day life as it is to day, built round the fruits of technology, the
majority at this time were still British inventions although Germany
and the USA were also contributing.
Some examples;
Transport
With all those sheep in Australia and nobody to eat them locally they
needed to be shipped back to England if they were to be worth any
thing.
England invented steam turbine, propeller driven steel ships some 10
times the size and faster than the wood and sail variety. (Steam
Turbines invented by Englishman Charles Parsons).
The sheep had to come to England via the Equator so for edible meat
they required cooling.
Refrigerators were invented by British physicists Lord Kevin and James
Joule (cooling by adiabatic expansion).
London was the first city in the world to have an underground
railway. (Now called the Tube). Initially powered by coal and steam,
about 100 years ago it was converted to clean electric motor power
thanks to the fundamental inventions of Englishman Michael Faraday.
Also at this time man first flew in the air. The Wright Brother's plane kept airborne for 45 minutes in 1907.
This period would not be properly described without mentioning
German born Jewish physicist Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955). In 1905
working in Switzerland he published four separate papers which were so
revolutionary and far ahead of their time that nobody could understand
them. His special theory of relativity is probably his most famous
work. He created the intellectual environment to develop Nuclear Power
and Bombs. With the arrival of Hitler Einstein became domicile in the
US.
Also 100 years ago
The Suffragette movement (militant arm of
the Women's Social and Political Union) started in England where women
campaigned for more equality with men, denied to them since the birth
of time. After 20 years of rioting, self inflicted starvation and
moving oratory women were finally given the vote in 1918.
The concept of Radio(Wireless) was thought of by Maxwell
(1873), demonstrated by Hertz (1888) and finally made a commercial
reality by Marconi in 1895.
Television now the most powerful advertising and propaganda medium of all was developed by Britisher John Baird in 1926.
This period also saw the birth of two related industries Recorded Music
and Pop (Popular music). This required the development of the
Microphone, the gramophone (record player), the amplifier and the
loudspeaker. Starting in about 1900 it took almost 30 years for all the
pieces to be put in place. Singing to entertain hundreds of people with
out a trained operatic voice was possible for the first time creating
such legends as Americans Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, both multi
millionaires, would probably have been nothing without these inventions.
The major contributors were; Emil Berliner (a German living in America)
the gramophone record. Lee de Forest an American invented the triode
valve permitting amplification 1928.
Americans Rice and Kellogg invented the loudspeaker (moving coil) in
1925. To complete the picture Englishman Alan Dower Blumlein developed
the first high quality moving coil microphone as well as two channel
stereo sound (1928). The world had for the first time high quality
recorded and amplified music.
WORLD WAR 1
100 years ago the great powers of Europe,
although they had carved up Africa nicely between them, eyed each other
nervously waiting for the first one to make a territorial advance. This
nervousness was caused by power shifts in three major European Empires;
- The German Empire becoming a world force for the first time.
- The old Austro-Hungarian Empire, centred in Vienna, loosing its middle European domination.
- The
huge Ottoman Empire centred in Turkey but stretching the from Austrian
boarder in the west (Bosnia) across the whole of Arabia, was also
beginning to breakdown creating a political vacuum in Serbia and the
rest of the Balkans.
Two sides developed:
- England plus France and Russia (Called the Triple Entente)
- Germany in support of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire which included Bosnia and Italy, called the Triple Alliance.
In June 1914 a Serbian assassin shot and killed Austrian
Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on a visit to in Sarajevo
Bosnia. Austria then invaded Serbia. Russia who had an alliance with
Serbia (and still has) declared war on Austria. Germany, supporting
Austria, declared war on Russia. England came into the war when Germany
invaded neutral Belgium.
Hence this was not a world war as World War 2 but involved the whole of
the world wide British Empire who came to Europe to help the English
plus the Americans who also came to help the English.
The English lost a million lives in this war, not won by England and her allies until 1918.
The
main feature of this war were trenches. That is the main battle line
between the Germans on the one side and the English and French on the
other were two long parallel trenches stretching over 500 miles from
the English channel to Switzerland. This generated a military
stalemate. The side that attacked was immediately wiped out by the
other side.
Weapons
This stalemate needed one side to think up a new
weapon to mow through the opposing trenches. Two inventions finally
came on the scene but both too late to make any real difference at the
time
The aeroplane, nobody thought of using it to drop bombs.
The Tank, invented by Englishman Sir Ernest Swinton. They were deployed
first in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 but were not reliable enough
to make any difference until about November 1917.
The Submarine. As in World War 2 the Germans developed the
submarine and even at this early stage of its development to
devastating effect against the English merchant naval fleet carrying
food to England. German U boats were one of the main contributors to
the Americans coming to support England in this war as the Germans
developed a strategy of “if you see it torpedo it” and some US ships
got in the way. All parties came to realise that one Sub could sink one
Battleship which would have cost some hundred times as much.
Some 10 or so years after the war an arms race developed as to
who could build the biggest and fastest Battleships with the biggest
guns. Those involved were England and France, who couldn’t afford it
together with the US and for the first time Japan. The Germans were not
allowed to build Battleships so they cheated and built smaller ships
but armed like a Battleship. They became known as Pocket Battleships.
With both economic considerations and the fact that Battleships were
vulnerable to Submarines the Americans tried to bring about an
arms(Battleship) limitation treaty. Unfortunately after apparently
agreeing the Germans and the Japanese ignored it. (No wonder we have
spy planes these days)
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