At the outreach of fighting between England and the colonists in 1775, the British military was considered the strongest in the world. Britain had defeated France in the French and Indian War and had secured a place as the world's superpower.
At the beginning of the war, British forces outnumbered Continental forces; for example, British general William Howe's expeditionary force in 1776 numbered 32,000, compared to American general George Washington's force of less than 20,000. Britain's navy was the biggest and strongest in the world.
Britain was almost certainly the richest nation in the world in 1776, but far from being the most powerful.
At its height the British Empire was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. In 1815–1914 the Pax Britannica was the most powerful unitary authority in history due to the Royal Navy's unprecedented naval predominance.
The British Empire was, at its peak, the largest empire in history; it controlled just short of a quarter of the world's land area and a quarter of the population. There was a saying that "the sun never sets on the British Empire" because there were colonies all around the world.
In 1913, 412 million people lived under the control of the British Empire, 23 percent of the world's population at that time. It remains the largest empire in human history and at the peak of its power in 1920, it covered an astonishing 13.71 million square miles - that's close to a quarter of the world's land area.
In the history of the world, the empire of the Mongols became, at its peak, the second largest empire in history, only surpassed by the British Empire in the twentieth century.
The British Empire was the most extensive empire in human history. It was the world's foremost power throughout the late 18th and 19th centuries, and achieved its largest extent in the 20th century.
The British Empire was at its largest in 1919, after Britain acquired Germany's East and West African colonies and Samoa in the Treaty of Versailles, which marked the end of the First World War, 1914–18.
The size of the British Empire – the amount of land and number of people under British rule – changed in size over the years. At its height in 1922, it was the largest empire the world had ever seen, covering around a quarter of Earth's land surface and ruling over 458 million people.
The Continental Army, the rebel army, was led by George Washington and helped by France and Spain. They defeated the British Army after the British moved their attention to other matters.
Some would say the empire officially came to an end in February of that year when—utterly drained by the two world wars—the British cabled Washington that they no longer had the money or troops to defend Greece or Turkey as the Soviet Union threatened to extend its influence in the early Cold War.
By 1945, however, colonies were an expensive liability for Clement Attlee's newly elected Labour government. The United States' rising global influence and its opposition to imperialism made colonialism less politically viable, while Japan's wartime victories had destroyed Britain's imperial prestige.
Britain had become the first truly global power in history. Unlike any earlier empire, it got most of its wealth not from plunder or tax but from its dominance in trade, and used its military and economic muscle to protect free trade and open markets.
As economic historian Adam Tooze writes in his book The Deluge, for a century, the British Empire had been the largest economic power in the world; in 1916, its output was overtaken by that of the United States.
Britain's military was the best in the world. Their soldiers were well equipped, well disciplined, well paid, and well fed. The British navy dominated the seas. Funds were much more easily raised by the Empire than by the Continental Congress.
Yet despite all of this global power and the emergence of Britain by the beginning of the nineteenth century as the world's first true superpower, the British Empire had very humble, small-scale origins.
At its peak after the Great War, the British empire covered nearly a quarter of the Earth's land surface and encompassed a similar proportion of global population, more than 500 million. France accounted for only 9 per cent of the Earth's land surface and 108 million of its people.
In 1939 the British Empire and the Commonwealth together comprised a global power, with direct or de facto political and economic control of 25% of the world's population, and of 30% of its land mass.
Straight off the bat, France has a much larger combined military force with 203,000 active personnel, this includes those serving in the French army, air force and navy. Compare this with the UK which currently has just 150,000 active personnel across its three branches.
China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States are often referred to as great powers by academics due to "their political and economic dominance of the global arena". These five nations are the only states to have permanent seats with veto power on the UN Security Council.
Britain as a Superpower, 1945-1957.
Genghis Khan was by far the greatest conqueror the world has ever known, whose empire stretched from the Pacific Ocean to central Europe, including all of China, the Middle East and Russia.
1) The British Empire was the largest empire the world has ever seen. The British Empire covered 13.01 million square miles of land - more than 22% of the earth's landmass.
The earliest known empire was the Akkadian Empire. For around 1,000 years, Mesopotamia was dominated by city-states—small political units, where a city controlled its surrounding area. In 2330 BCE, Sargon of Akkad took control of southern Mesopotamia.