Why was Britain always the best of the major European powers despite having the least land and population?

Britain hasn't really been that relevant until probably the beginning of the 18th century around the time of the creation of the union. Not trying to belittle the relevancy of the British in history but they weren't that much important before their colonies and were pretty much second rank power on the continent due to their small population, and were rarely fighting alone because of this. It's thanks to their isolation, their NA and later Indian holdings and the French revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars that they got so powerful in the 19th century
But in the end of the 19th century it's hard to say they had a small population. In the 20th century between the 1910's and 1990's the UK was more populous than France despite using to have about a third of its population

The revolutionary war was an English civil war
Do your research before you start pretending to like us again

le civil war meme

>The revolutionary war was an English civil war
Does that make the LatAm wars of independence civil wars, or does it only count if the rebels are ethnically European?

Oh boy this post is full of delusion
>not relevant till the 18th century
An irrelevant island took half of France
And fought against the full force of the Spanish fleet several times
>population ever being larger than France
You are insane
France and Germany has always had a larger pop than us
That is why we see the (pre brexit) econmic success as such a great thing
We took over France despite having a tiny population

It counts when George Washington and franklin all called themself Englishmen even after the war and when Franklin routinely went to the UK to speak with parliament
Sorry that all your colonies are African m8
Maybe soon you can say Algeria was a civil war :^)

if they were the strongest country, but why can't never conquered Europe?
France, Spain, Germany, and Italy dominated continental Europe

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To be fair the 100 years war was more like an French civil war at first though, and once Burgundy was fed up with the war the English got annihilated.

Except France had Spain Scotland papal state and Genoa as allies which nullifies any advantage the English had
>civil war
Burgundians didn’t speak “French” nor did they consider themself “French”

This is why
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Britannica

Yeah, and then the Englishmen that fought in the Revolution stayed in America and became me

What the UK is big and it had TOP 3 population when it was a wolrd power.

burgundy was literally a duchy granted by the king of FRANCE to his youngest son, you brainlet

>We took over France despite having a tiny population
You realise that the Duke of Normandy, the Duke of Aquitaine also brought their troops from their provinces to help out the Englsih monarch during those wars.

So then every fucking country in Europe is French or Austrian?
Great logic
Cocaine sounds like your strong suit not history
And as I said the French had allies too

Despite that Burgundy had even less to do with the English and they were absolutely crucial for their success in the 100 years war. The English were not exactly alone either; in fact the ACTUAL Papacy (the one in Rome y'know, rather than Avignon) was siding with the English and the Spanish were mostly concerned with Portugal and did little to English other than a few naval campaigns.
Of course, the English fought well during Agincourt but in the end they got destroyed badly by the French.

tell me one period in history when english people weren't trampled on by foreign overlords

Truth be told I have only read the English and there history on relation to this topic

The great (British)Somali(land)an migration to sweaden

Well a civil war is just a non-international war, but the "non-international" characteristic is relative.
The Algerian War of independence could be a civil war in the same way as the Spanish civil war
I don't see how the American war of independence being a "civil war" or not matters

I didn't say that England was irrelevant, but it wasn't as relevant as it had become in the early modern era.
About "taking half of France", I guess you're talking about the Hundred Years' War, but this was a succession war between the Plantagenet and the Capetian, both French dynasties trying to hold the most of France through not just conquest but also alliances and marriages, far from an actual "Anglo-French" war with the modern idea of nations (England vs France), especially when the idea of the French people didn't exist and you'd see the "French" fighting and supporting different sides.

>population ever being higher as France
Look it up, between the 1910's and 1990's the UK had a higher population than France, by a few millions yes, but still it's impressive.

We lost like two battles at the very arse-end of the Hundred Years War. Henry V dying of the shits did far more to help the French than any of their soldiers did.

Balance of power dumb dumb
Ok I was wrong
Sorry for being rude Frenchbro
Know any good reading on the 100year war?

I can see it's easy to get ecstatic about English performances in the 100 years war if you look at the period in which the French were not aware that they too, actually possessed a brain. The main success of the English was that they discovered much earlier than the French the concepts of tactics and thinking in general. When the French eventually became aware of the brain the tides were quickly turned.
>"two"
You virtually lost every battle that happened between Burgundy brokering peace and the end of the war. I'm not sure where you're getting your info from but from the looks of it it must be Limbaugh.

Island pussies faggots ,and they werent "the best"

How vily uneducated. The war had four phases, and the British took home the first and third one (Poitiers in the first, Agincourt in the third while France was under mad king Charles V).

The French took home the second (the campaigns of Bertrand le Guesclin stamping out rhe British), and the fourth (the one with Jeanne d'Arc and Orléans, Castillon, Patay...).

So it wasn't so cut and clean idiot.

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>Napoleonic wars
They had allies

>ww1
They had allies

>ww2
If you call losing your entire empire "winning" AND they had allies

>Wikipedia
France had completely lost the war in the "third phase". Henry V had taken Meaux twenty miles out from Paris. He had forced Charles VI into signing a treaty passing the French crown to Henry upon his death. I am not sure how much more complete a victory could be than this. Unfortunately, Henry wasn't expecting to die at the ripe old age of 35, but he caught dysentery and popped his clogs leaving enough wiggle room for the French to recuperate and claim the throne back for Charles VII, who was 19-years-old, and take advantage of 2-year-old Henry VI and his helpless position. In fact for the first 15 years of his life England was led by a squabbling regency. Sheer dumb luck could not have done more for France even if they'd won the medieval euromillions.

Some german made a great detailed series of threads about the Hundred Years' War on /his/, you could probably find it in desuarchive
It's easy to say "the English rekt the French" or "the HYW was a French civil war" but once you get the autism away it's much more complicated and interesting
Wikipedia also gets most of the basic stuff on this honestly, despite how much people seem to hate it

>When the French eventually became aware of the brain the tides were quickly turned.
Artillery played a huge part in their comeback as well

this,

>Napoleonic wars
won thanks to russia

>ww1
won thanks to france

>ww2
won thanks to usa and russia

Nobody won WWI aside from the US and the only victors of WW2 were the USSR and the aforementioned yanks

How do you feel about thousands of Englishmen dying just because your French kings had some dispute with
other French kings?

hmmmm
could this be the famed polish buthurt?

This
UK helped USA in becoming a superpower
From WW1 onward all the decisions they ever took were beyond retarded

what
france practically 1v1'd germany in ww1, a country that had almost double the population
you just sat there on your cuck islands and watched, maybe just forced a dying arab state to get out of egypt

ww2 - france capitulates, germany goes after ussr, they get pushed back thanks to soviet manpower and american equipment, you sat there and lost your empire