Lessons of the British Empire
Who were the greatest conquerors in the history of the Earth?
A: The British. Below is a map of the British Empire at its height circa 1921 – the largest empire in history.
Subsequently, the U.S. took over as the world’s most powerful nation, but colonialism has gone out of fashion, so we’ll never match the British empire. Anyway, the U.S. was founded by the British and inherited its institutions and many traditions from the British.
Does this strike you as incongruous? The British are not especially known for their aggressive, dominant personalities or their terrifying warriors. How could they be history’s greatest conquerors? I think the answer is that Britain was history’s greatest conqueror nation partly because British people are not especially aggressive or dominant. The British did not conquer all that territory through their huge muscles; they did it through being advanced, prosperous, well-organized. A highly aggressive people could not have built such an empire, because the men in that society would be fighting each other for dominance, which is destructive to the group.
If you watch Star Trek, the Klingon Empire is among the more unrealistic aspects of the show (besides time travel and faster-than-light travel) – an empire built by a species constantly focused on combat, whose men all look like they are hopped up on steroids. Superficially, we think, “Oh yes, they would be very hard to defeat.” Until you realize that the Klingons would be too focused on fighting to have built a well-run society, which means that they would be living under failed states, they’d be armed with knives, and the Federation would walk all over them.
I’ve seen people (including some of my Facebook friends) wringing their hands over declining testosterone levels in modern society. I don’t worry about it. Aggressive, high-testosterone individuals make for a weak society. Perhaps in ancient times, when no one had advanced technology or a well-run society, the societies with aggressive men were more powerful. But in modern times, things are almost the reverse. I wonder how much of modern differences in societal success are explained by differences in average testosterone levels. (Here, I’m assuming that testosterone is strongly linked to aggression. No doubt there are other factors. I would hypothesize in general that individual-level traits of aggression explain societal-level failures.) But it’s probably not as simple as “the lower the testosterone levels, the more powerful the society”. Perhaps there is an optimal level, one that makes people ambitious without being overly crime-prone. And maybe the British come close to that optimum.
Note: Obviously, I am not promoting colonialism.