| 100 Years Ago |
- 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
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.
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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