“War tore the guts out of the British empire, weakening it in resources and morale. The first major loss was Ireland.”

—  Jeremy Black (historian)

Source: A History of the British Isles (1996)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Dec. 18, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "War tore the guts out of the British empire, weakening it in resources and morale. The first major loss was Ireland." by Jeremy Black (historian)?
Jeremy Black (historian) photo
Jeremy Black (historian) 1
British military historian 1955

Related quotes

“The multicultural policy has, at times, tended to emphasize the rights of ethnic minorities at the expense of the majority of Australians, thus unnecessarily encouraging divisions and weakening social cohesion. It has tended to be anti-British, and yet the people from the United Kingdom and Ireland form the dominant class of pre-war immigrants and the largest single group of post-war immigrants.”

Geoffrey Blainey book All for Australia

All for Australia (1984)

Billy Hughes photo

“We are loyal to the Empire first and foremost because we are of the British race.”

Billy Hughes (1862–1952) Australian politician, seventh prime minister of Australia

Speech during the 1917 federal election campaign (c. March 1917), quoted in Neville Kingsley Meaney, Australia and World Crisis, 1914-1923: Volume 2 (2009), p. 202

Margaret Thatcher photo

“We are fighting a major internal war against terrorism in Northern Ireland, and need more troops in order to win it.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech at Kensington Town Hall ("Britain Awake") (19 January 1976) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=102939
Leader of the Opposition

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston photo

“The British people realise that they are fighting for the hegemony of the Empire. If necessary we shall continue the war single-handed.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

King Albert I of Belgium's diary entry (7 February 1916), quoted in R. van Overstraeten (ed.), The War Diaries of Albert I King of the Belgians (1954), p. 85.

William Joyce photo

“[Winston Churchill] is the servant, not of the British public, or of the British Empire, but of International Jewish Finance. This charge must be preferred against a man who has so signally violated British tradition in the course of this war.”

William Joyce (1906–1946) British fascist and propaganda broadcaster

Broadcast, Radio Cologne, 8 April 1943.

Winston S. Churchill photo

“I have not become the King’s First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

speech at Lord Mayor’s Luncheon, Mansion House, London, November 10, 1942
The Yale Book of Quotations, ed. Fred R. Shapiro, Yale University Press (2006), p. 153 ISBN 0300107986
The Second World War (1939–1945)

Henry Adams photo

“The economic needs of a violently centralizing society forced the empire to enlarge its slave-system until the slave-system consumed itself and the empire too, leaving society no resource but further enlargement of its religious system in order to compensate for the losses and horrors of the failure.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)
Context: p>The result might have been stated in a mathematical formula as early as the time of Archimedes, six hundred years before Rome fell. The economic needs of a violently centralizing society forced the empire to enlarge its slave-system until the slave-system consumed itself and the empire too, leaving society no resource but further enlargement of its religious system in order to compensate for the losses and horrors of the failure. For a vicious circle, its mathematical completeness approached perfection. The dynamic law of attraction and reaction needed only a Newton to fix it in algebraic form.At last, in 410, Alaric sacked Rome, and the slave-ridden, agricultural, uncommercial Western Empire — the poorer and less Christianized half — went to pieces. </p

Winston S. Churchill photo

“It is the end of the British Empire.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Remark to Harold Nicolson (22 September 1938) after Neville Chamberlain flew to Godesberg to meet Hitler, quoted in Harold Nicolson, Diaries and Letters, 1930-1964 (London: Penguin, 1980), p. 134
The 1930s

Adolf Hitler photo

“We can safely make one prophecy: whatever the outcome of this war, the British Empire is at an end. It has been mortally wounded. The future of the British people is to die of hunger and tuberculosis in their cursed island.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

4 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

Jacques Delors photo

“Europe needs an army to fight the resource wars of the twenty-first century.”

Jacques Delors (1925) French economist and politician

Variations of this have circulated among Irish and left-wing Eurosceptic groups. Delors explicitly denied making any such statement in 1992 and 1998 in the leadup to Irish referendums on the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties. Commentators have found no evidence for it.
Attributions:
[Facing the threat of Brussels rule at our expense, https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1991/1121/Pg014.html#Ar01400, 30 July 2019, The Irish Times, 21 November 1991, 14, subscription, Anthony, Coughlan]
[Proinsias, de Rossa, https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1991-11-29/3/#para_191, 29 November 1991, Dáil Éireann debates, Maastricht Summit: Motion]
[Maastricht and neutrality : Ireland's neutrality and the future of Europe, John, Maguire, Joe, Noonan, 1992, Cork, People First/Meitheal, 19–20]
[Fox, Carol, Gearing up, 25554848, Fortnight, 1994, 334, 11–12: 12, 0141-7762]
[Joe, Higgins, https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/1997-10-16/24/#para_608, 16 October 1997, Dáil Éireann debates, Amsterdam Treaty: Statements (Resumed)]
Edward, Spalton, 4 July 2004, (Letter) Fashion statement, Daily Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/3608033/Fashion-statement.html,
John, Boyd, Campaign Against European Federalism, Europe for Peace Conference, Manchester, 5 March 2005 https://web.archive.org/web/20070809083941/http://www.gmdcnd.org.uk/events/europeconference/amC.htm,
[Gibson, Dirk C., Commercial Space Tourism: Impediments to Industrial Development and Strategic Communication Solutions, 2012, Bentham Science Publishers, 9781608052394, 12, https://books.google.ie/books?id=hSkW9TW3omEC&pg=PA12, 21 July 2019]
The European Alliance of EU-critical Movements, EU Counter Summit Statement, London, 7 November 2015 http://teameurope.co/statements.html,
[The financial cost of signing up to PESCO, https://people.ie/news/PN-178.pdf, People's News, People's Movement, Dublin, 178, 20 December 2017]
Morning Star, Macron calls for joint EU army project to step up a gear, 27 August 2018 https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/macron-calls-joint-eu-army-project-step-gear,
Refutations:
The Irish Times, subscription, 12 June 1992, 12, Colm, Boland, 'Interference' by Delors denounced https://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/archive/1992/0612/Pg007.html#Ar00701,
[30001811, Ireland's Foreign Relations in 1992, Patrick, Keatinge, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 4, 1993, 72 [footnote]]
McKenna's case not a Euromyth, 15 May 1998, Patrick, Smyth, The Irish Times https://www.irishtimes.com/news/mckenna-s-case-not-a-euromyth-1.152890,
Misattributed

Related topics