The United Kingdom, a loose amalgamation of England, Scotland, and Wales is less than 1/3rd the size of the state of Texas and, yet, for more than half a millennium it ruled an overwhelming part of the world. Once, derogatorily called ‘a nation of shopkeepers,’ this small, island nation was ‘Mother’ country to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India/Pakistan, Kenya, South Africa, Hong Kong, most of the Caribbean islands, and, for a while, the American colonies. For a half-century it was also the keeper of the peace in Palestine and much of the volatile middle-east.
They produced the Magna Carta a thousand years ago, establishing a doctrine on the relationships of men. That document would lead, centuries later, to the Treatises of John Locke, and, eventually, to Thomas Jefferson and America’s Declaration of Independence.
The U.K. produced men of brilliance including Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Disraeli, Adam Smith, and Winston Churchill…explorers such as Sir Francis Drake and Captain Cook, artists such as Gainsborough, Handel, and Elgar. Writers such as Shakespeare, Austen, Shelley, Dickens, Keats, Defoe, and Huxley. The architect Peter Wren.
These same shopkeepers defeated the powerful, much larger, Spanish Armada in one century and Napoleon in another. They led the armies that hastened the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, decades later, Nazi Germany.
Complicit in the slave trade, they recognized its evil and abolished it thirty years before America…and they did it without a war. In the 20th century, such brilliant minds as Alan Turing and Francis Crick can be added to the list. Turing for his Enigma machine that broke the German code in the Second World War, and Crick, for his collaboration with James Watson in discovering the DNA’s double helix.
After the Second World War the British Commonwealth changed its relationships, as its possessions sought a more independent path. Its mandate of Palestine ended in 1947, the same year it granted long-promised independence to India/Pakistan.
The country turned to its shared heritage with Europe. It became a member of the European Common market. It shared the benefits of tariff-free trade, open travel, and, eventually, hoped to join in the use of common currency.
It has survived centuries of bloodshed over Ireland. It rejected a move to near socialism under Prime Minister Clement Atlee. It has survived abandoning the throne and the extremes of Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson.
It survived the death of Diana, the peccadillos of Andrew, and the current diatribes of Megan and Harry. It may even survive its departure from the European Common market.
Great Britain and the United States share a common heritage, a belief in individual freedom, a conviction that democracy, with all its faults, remains the best option in a multicultural society.
We are now in the 21st century and the U.K.’s pinnacle was in centuries past. While it may no longer be a beacon guiding the world, its past had earned it a seat at the table of nations that has always strived for better mankind.