When the gunfire faded away at Waterloo in in June 1815 it marked the beginning of the British Century that lasted until the 1900’s as the more efficient German economy began to challenge the British dominancy. However, empires don’t die a sudden death but fade slowly. It took the Boor War in South Africa along with two world wars to drain the last vestige of empire out of the teacup.
Napoleon laughed at them as a nation of shopkeepers, but the British system of capitalism, representative government and sophisticated financial system anchored in the Bank of England gave them greater staying power. They ultimately took him from the battlefield to exile in the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean where he died six years later.
For a hundred years afterward the British currency and financial system, called Sterling, and the British Navy were the ultimate weapons that backed up the phrase “the sun never sets on the British Empire”. However as great coaches say the tactics that got you to the top are not the tactics that will keep you there. As the world evolved from agriculture to manufacturing British factories and labor became uncompetitive with Bismarck’s Germany and their coal fields in the Ruhr Valley. Rather than undergo the pain of transformative changes in their economic production and their class system of society, they used trade restriction to try to block their competitors.
