Why did the British Empire cede control of India/Pakistan/Bangladesh?

Because the point of colonies is to make money, and they weren't really financially viable any more what with the world wars and the Yanks and the reds, and Gandhi and shit.

>>1908091

Too expensive to protect, not profitable enough to keep, and a growing and increasingly assertive independence movement with popular support in Britain and India

>>1908105
You're telling me that a completely militarised Britain couldnt control Indian after winning World war 2?

>>1908118
That's not what he said at all. He said it wasn't worthwhile, not that they couldn't if they wanted to...

>>1908118
military costs money dumbass.
Now imagine doing that for every colony.

>>1908118

Yes, it could have, but there would have been no point in doing so - why would you bankrupt a country to cling onto an asset that's losing you money

>>1908127
But this country was once the jewel of the British Empire. They could've still had enough trade and resources to profit from there. All they needed to do was put down the local movements or offer the Indians some measure of say in their own governance.

>>1908140

>But this country was once the jewel of the British Empire

luckily politicians make decisions based on reality and not sentimentality

Putting down ~400 million Indians costs a lot of money, especially when they had 2.5 million men under arms in WW2 who might not exactly be loyal to the British if the British decided to try to use them to attempt to stop independence…

After the war the British empire was dead. It was bullied by America and Russia and there was nowt they could do about it.

>>1908118
>>1908140
>You're telling me that a completely militarised Britain couldnt control Indian after winning World war 2?
>All they needed to do was put down the local movements or offer the Indians some measure of say in their own governance.

You guys don't know much about WW2 in the Asia-Pacific region do you?

India was armed to the teeth with high degree of autonomy, weapons manufacturing, and training. They were undoubtedly the strongest military in the Asia-Pacific immediately after the War.

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_National_Army_trials

When the Brtis tried to even trial the Indian National Army (Army created by Japan for Indian invasion). The public outcry and non-compliance of troops to follow their orders quickly led them to commute the sentences and was probably the tipping point for them militarily. Politically, Gandhi had already won. Diplomatically, Britain was more a US vassal dependent on them to rebuild.

There was absolutely no real strategy to hold India. It was either a crushing military defeat ala France in Indochina, or an exit strategy. They partitioned India to favor the minority Muslim on their way out, so I guess you could say they got their revenge.

>>1908091
FDR cucked ch*rchill

>>1908105
it was the only profitable colony the brits had.

>>1908140

>they could have made profit

If they could then they wouldn't have given it up.

>>1909735
India was still profitable as a resource hub for britain, which is why churchill threw a hissy fit when the burgers took his shiniest toy away from him.

>>1908091
t. riven main

>>1909742

It wasn't. Empires are expensive as fuck and Britain was massively in debt after World War II. Also get the fuck out of here with this "US caused it to collapse" shit. No one takes this serious.

>>1909728
>>1909742
Ch*rchill had already lost his election due to sheer incompetence by that time.

FDR did cuck him on many occasions, however, that short drunkard was honestly an idiot. He was great at making speeches, but shat at administration or war. Fucking idiot came to half the War meetings drunk and hungover.

>>1908140
yeah it was once the jewel of the british empire, but those days were gone and no amount of sentimentality or talk about "making britain great again" was going to change that

Just look what happen when France or Portugal tried to hold onto its colonies in the face of falling revenue and rising independence movements. The British were very smart to have cut their losses when they did.

>>1909751
US aid was congruent with the brits dismantling their empire.

>>1909781
This is not true.

France got to play babby's last empire for a few decades, and they still got US aid.

>>1908150
except trump

>>1909754
Yeah, I keep reading about him and it seems that even some of the British say the best thing about him was his spirit.

>>1909825
Some speculate his election loss was an inside job to keep him away from doing something stupid.

Trying to prevent Indian independence forcibly probably would have been one of things.

File: CON-COUGHLIN-Churchill-1896Horseback.jpg (235KB, 789x1056px) Image search: [Google]

235KB, 789x1056px

>>1909825
I would really recommend "churchill my early life" to everyone on this board

everyone always circle jerks about his WW2 leadership but imo the most interesting parts of his life was when he was still a war correspondent

>>1909825
It's well known that he was a shit military commander. He was in charge of the Gallipoli campaign which was a disaster so he got fired from that position.

Apparently during WW2 he would come up with like 20 really shit ideas and 1 decent one during meetings. The British military command then had to decide which idea was best and then Churchill got all the credit for it as if he was some sort of genius military tactician.

>>1910670
The man was a fucking idiot. He wanted to charge east as soon as the Germans surrendered, re arming the Wehrmacht to help us fight the Russians. Luckily the British chiefs of staff told him to do one.

>>1910670
>>1910755

I've heard the reason they kept Churchill was because he was half american and they wanted to try and get america in the war, is that true?

I remember he made speeches in the US almost always reminding them he was half american.

>>1909825

yeah he was a useful figure at a hard time (probably)

but most major decisions he actually made...were not so good

>>1908118
Some people really overestimate the WW2 era British military lmao
Singapore, does that name ring a bell?

>>1908118
A completely militarized American armed force couldn't control Vietnam.

KEK

The only winning move was to give up.

I would argue that post war Britain didnt have any chance to subdue the South Asian continent.

The French were humiliated in Vietnam, what makes you think Britain could hold onto a far larger and far more populous sub continent?

>>1908091
Americans imposing democratic values on everybody else.

>>1909751
>It wasn't. Empires are expensive as fuck and Britain was massively in debt after World War II.
This again. Britain's colonies were self-funding. They actually only started getting money thrown at them after WWII.

>>1910755
Dumb Churchill idea thread? Dumb Churchill idea thread.

He wanted to expand the strategic bombing campaign, which was doing fuck all in 1941, to include the Soviet Union. That would have been a total fucking disaster.

Churchill was a fucking idiot who stopped Britain from getting the A-Bomb at the same time as the Americans.

British scientists were working on Tube Alloys (nuclear weapon project) and it was going quite well. As the war progressed they basically ran out of money and had to make the choice between continuing with the project that may or may not be successful or building more ships/planes

They chose the latter however they were approached by the Americans WHO LITERALLY OFFERED TO PAY FOR THE ENTIRE PROJECT in exchange for information and research. What did Churchill do? He didn't even reply to the request because for some stupid fucking reason he was offended by the thought of the yanks paying for it (even though he was more than happy to accept food and materiel shipments from America at the time)

Anyway the rest is history, America went ahead with the project on their own, surpassed the British and then Churchill had the audacity to go back to them and say "You know that deal you offered ages ago? I'll accept it now" to which the American's quite rightly said "Haha fuck no, we'll share some info with you but you're absolutely not getting the same deal as before"

As a Brit it really pisses me off when that fat manbaby is hailed as such a hero. He was great at giving speeches and keeping the population from having a meltdown, he was shit at everything else.

>>1908118
>Britain
>winning World war 2

Top kek

>tfw Rudyard Kipling's India is gone forever

Make it come back, I wanna go there just once

They ran out of money

also it seemed in bad taste to keep it after WWII

>>1910998
He was a wartime hero, not a peace time one.

>starve out india
>starve out irish