France's ass wouldn't be as easy to kick as you guys think.... I think

It just sounded like you meant it in a "how much it was based on how impressive it was" instead of landmass... when it was in fact the same amount of landmass as well.

The french do have a VERY strong army on paper.

Though, one issue may be that the french have a history of inflating things on paper.

On paper the UK and France are REAL close.

France has more troops, the UK has nearly double aircraft and the ships are about even.

However, the UK have a slight tech advatnage and i'd say a very extensive training avantage.   Top UK troops are as good as any out there.

It'd be even early, but air superiority and better training would allow the english to inflict more casualties and pull out a win 7-8 times out of 10 i'd guess... air superiority is EVERYTHING when it comes to modern warfare... or it's thought to be anyway.

That's why the US developed those super fighters.  One of those could take out a half a dozen modern aircrafts in a fight.

Aah, I see. Didn't mean it that way though :P

What's not impressive about it? It had the largest empire in history, and it did that without the empire even being contiguous. It also colonized what are now some of the wealthiest nations in the world (even if they became nations after freedom), such as the United States, India, Canada, and Australia. Not to mention that they had territory on every continent in the world.

Like it's said before, I don't think it's because most don't think they're not part of Europe at all (except for the ones that do, i guess) but because they 're an island and it's easier to just say Europe.

And the Brittish Empire was teh awesome.

the English are there own people. They alone stood up to Hitler while the whole of europe rolled over like a good dog. Being an American and serving with a few of Englands boys back in 1991 overseas, i can tell you the English are just better people than europeans.

You could argue they did it the easiest way possible and that it not being contiguous was a power not a weakness.  They just rolled in anywhere they could that was really weak and took over with little struggle with vastly superior weapons.  They had a few tough conflicts, but those largely occured AFTER they conquered those areas.

Unlike say the Mongols who were only about 700 million short of the world by taking on all comers taking much harder land to conquerer often with technologies superior to them.

The Mongols took 10% less land but did it in a FAR more impressive way.


Additionallly the British tend to get "extra" credit for stuff... for example completly uninhabitable parts of Canada or inhabited only by self ruling natives, Parts of India that were really indepented (about 50%) and the interior of Australia where nobody lived... except natives.

Additionally there was a time between civil wars in which you could consider the Mongol empire, well an empire again... in which case they were far larger then the UK's empire was both in population and land size.

The same could be said for the Romans... who went through half as much land, but took much more trouble to expand.

I still think it was impressive... but I think it'd be a misnomer to consider it the most impressive empire, and I could see how some might not be impressed by it.

Oh additionally, when counting world population... the UK empire was like... 15th or so...  so they had less people to take down.

The UK got the land mass record (kind of) but they did do it in about the easiest way possible.  It's like a few of your friends having a contest where they try and sleep with the most women, and one of them wins... by like 1 girl.  However the girls he slept with were largely very unattractive and annoying, while the other guy stuck to a minium of a 7 or something.