What led to the decline of Britain, once known as the empire?
1. The bourgeoisie is unwilling to invest in new equipment and technology.
In A.D. 1688, after a glorious revolution, Britain took the lead in establishing the capitalist system in the world, and the bourgeoisie finally overthrew the feudal autocratic rule and established the bourgeois system. Subsequently, with the achievements of the first industrial revolution, the British finally established a great empire known all over the world as "the sun never sets".
From then on, Britain, which has the most extensive colony in the world, can gain huge profit space by relying on low-cost technology and capital investment, and gradually becomes inactive and uninterested in new technologies and investment in new technologies. The bourgeoisie is unwilling to invest in upgrading equipment and adopting new technologies. They export their surplus capital to other capitalist countries for usury in order to obtain high profits. Therefore, British enterprises generally have outdated equipment and relatively backward production technology.
Second, missed the development opportunity of the second industrial revolution.
Until the late19th century, vocational and technical education, as an important force to promote the industrial revolution, was still ignored in Britain, and no professional vocational and technical education institutions were established. Both university education and promotion despise the concept of vocational and technical education. The main inventions of the second industrial revolution, such as the generator invented by Siemens in Germany, the internal combustion engine car invented by Carl Benz and the telephone invented by Bell in the United States, are not in Britain. Germany, the United States and other countries have achieved rapid growth in economic strength by virtue of the scientific and technological achievements made in the second industrial revolution: from 65438 to 0894, the total economic output of the United States successfully surpassed that of the United Kingdom, ranking first in the world;
Since then, Germany has successfully surpassed Britain; By the 1930s of 19, the Soviet Union, which achieved the results of the first and second industrial revolutions, leapfrogged the two industrial revolutions and surpassed Britain again. At this time, Britain has been crushed and surpassed by rising stars such as the United States, Germany and the Soviet Union, and its national strength is relatively weak.
Third, the two world wars consumed Britain's national strength.
In the first half of the 20th century, the main battlefields of two world wars occurred in Europe. Britain was a major participant in the First and Second World Wars. It can be said that Britain made great sacrifices and contributions to the final victory of the war, whether in World War I or World War II.
According to the postwar statistics of the British Ministry of Defence, during World War II, more than 400,000 British officers were killed, the total number of military and civilian casualties exceeded 65.438+0.6 million, the national property loss was close to 65.438+0.5 billion US dollars, five aircraft carriers and auxiliary aircraft carriers were lost each, and other various surface warships lost 346.438+0. Since then, Britain has basically lost control of the ocean. After World War II, Britain lost its colonies because the colonies declared their independence one after another.
The war is constantly devouring Britain's national strength, and the national finance can't make ends meet. In order to win the war, a lot of real money flowed from Britain to the United States, used to buy weapons and ammunition against war-mad Germany, and constantly emptied the British treasury. At the beginning of the war, the United States and other countries made a huge windfall in national strength. Finally, Britain retreated from the most powerful empire and became weak, and the United States became the world's largest power. It can be said that the wind and water have turned.