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Only 22 countries have never been invaded by Britain
Only 22 countries have never been invaded by Britain
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29 comments
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This is incorrect, England has never invaded Portugal. They have in fact formed one of the oldest alliances in the world.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Portuguese_Alliance#Disruption_and_renewal
(The English Armada invaded on behalf of the deposed monarchy.)
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They might be counting the Drake-Norris expedition. I suppose failing miserably at an invasion still counts as an invasion.
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Or the USA - English troops were already there when it started.
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Okay, during the war of 1812, Canadians (who were British at the time) marched on Washington and burned down the Whitehouse. That probably counts, but it wasn't held territory.
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I think if you declare independence then the British are an invading force and have by definition, invaded.
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Not to mention the taking over from natives. Pretty sure they felt invaded long before the US existed.
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that's not what "invade" means - you can't do it if you're already there.
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If you say so, then I suppose the next troop resupply would qualify as an invasion?
Regardless, outside of the Revolutionary War I was just reminded of the War of 1812.
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I'm not "saying so" I'm repeating what the dictionary says.
The War of 1812 was declared against Britain by the US. British troops did land here once the war was on, if you call that an "invasion". And I guess you could cite the Beatles etc.
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An unsuccessful invasion is still an invasion.
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There are other weird things on here.
Countries that didn't exist during British actions, for example. Finland has only existed since 1917 in its current form -- when did the UK invade them? Participate on the opposite side of a war? Yes.
And others, like Canada, were largely created by treaty. Canadians if different political stripes might argue that the treaties were unfair in retrospect, and thus it qualifies as an invasion, but that's a bit of a stretch of the definition. True enough, the British fought the French in Quebec and that could constitute an invasion, but Canada didn't exist then.
Then there's the invaded vs liberated debate...
There are many others here and one could go on at length.
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Finland has only existed since 1917
You can find an epub of the book on Library Genesis.
For Finland, it counts their invasion of what is now Finland during the Anglo-Russian War (1807–1812).
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Yeah, see, that's cheating. Finland was effectively occupied territory at the time.
The map is fun nevertheless. As an amateur history nerd, it just makes me wish I could click on it and find the details of said invasions, rather than trusting that the sources are accurate. Cause there are so many things on here that are really a stretch.
I'd also like to see a version with "Countries the UK has occupied after an invasion" and "countries the UK has seized land from after an invasion" -- because if the definition of invasion is simply a "marine landing" or "battle fought", it's very broad haha.
Though I also worry that in the modern era, with imperialism suddenly in vogue again, that this is priming people for whataboutism. We could redo this map with "Countries the British have invaded since WW2 ended" and it would be a lot smaller. Probably still larger than we'd expect at first glance. And how would you classify the Falklands? ;)
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Yeah, see, that’s cheating. Finland was effectively occupied territory at the time.
I think it is clear that the meaning of "invaded X" here is "invaded some place which today is part of X".
As an amateur history nerd, it just makes me wish I could click on it and find the details of said invasions
Again, you can find the whole book on LibGen :)
We could redo this map with “Countries the British have invaded since WW2 ended”
I don't have that map handy but, ::: spoiler here are the countries which had the British monarch as their 'sovereign', post-1952
(via) :::
Though I also worry that in the modern era, with imperialism suddenly in vogue again, that this is priming people for whataboutism
fyi the the pejorative "whataboutism" was actually coined by an apologist for British imperialism 😂
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You. I like you ;)
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29 comments