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Nostalgia is universal, but Britain is in the somewhat unique position of having once been a hyperpower and today being substantially less relevant on the world
by thronemonkey 14y ago
Nostalgia is universal, but Britain is in the somewhat unique position of having once been a hyperpower and today being substantially less relevant on the world stage.
- olavk 14y agoNot that unique actually. Many (perhaps most) countries in Europe have some period in the past when they were much more powerful than they are now.
- tokenadult 14y agoPlenty of countries in Asia too.
- pavel_lishin 14y agoRussia happens to be in both, and it definitely suffers from this nostalgia.
- commandar 14y agoThere's a reason why a huge portion of the population in the western hemisphere speaks Spanish.
- TazeTSchnitzel 14y agoAnd why quite a bit of Africa speaks French...
- Retric 14y agoSeems to me if anywhere Mogolia would probably suffer the most from this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mongol_Empire_map.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mongol_Empire_map.gif http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongol_Empire
- sliverstorm 14y agoExcept it ended 700 years ago, not less than 100.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- sliverstorm 14y agoPerhaps not truly unique, but two things about the British Empire perhaps make it sting a little more: 1) It ended more recently than other European empires. 2) "The sun never sets on the British Empire". It was huge.
- eternauta3k 14y ago2 was also true of Spain at some point.
- davidw 14y agoUnique? Portions of Italy have seen power come and go multiple times, if you count the Roman Empire. The Republic of Venice was still a going concern when the United States was in its infancy, and had been so for hundreds of years.