How did no european empire manage to build enough ships to invade Britain

How did no european empire manage to build enough ships to invade Britain

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  1. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The Spanish lost their attempt with the Armada. The French couldn't just go all-out on Navy since they also had to maintained sizeable land armies against the various fronts. Everybody else never built enough ships to challenge the British. (Ignore the Glorious Revolution were the Prince of Orange was invited by Parliament).

    The French Revolutionary + Napoleonic Wars saw the British crush virtually every fleet (The Nile, Copenhagen, and famously Trafalgar). For the rest of the war, no navy would be able to assemble or concentrate enough ships in the Dover to challenge the British control of the home seas. Because of the huge head start Trafalgar gave the British, they were able to continue building on their naval arms advantage. It's why the ironclads and dreadnought revolutions were important, because they effectively reset the race back to 0 ships for everyone and theoretically another country could build enough ships to overwhelm the British (like the battleship race). This lead also gave the British invaluable expertise in shipbuilding, seafaring, and sailors that was unrivaled. Having an experienced military and passing on that knowledge to future generations is vastly underestimated, but also a huge boon to the British Navy post-Napoleon.

    The British established the 2-navy standard and was able to maintain it thanks to its strong economy/empire. This meant the British maintained enough battleships to rival the next 2 largest powers (typically France + Russia). No other country had the economic output or military necessity to fund such a huge naval program, since France/Russia had to also maintain far larger land armies than the British.

    It wasn't until the Washington Naval Treaties post-WW1 when the British had to acknowledge the rise of US/Japan that any other country started having comparable fleet sizes to the British.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Can you repeat this but in English

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        The Anglos blew up everyone elses navies and then their lead was too big so no one could catch up but then Japs and Mutts did eventually
        There, no need for pretentious textwalls

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          Fascinating.

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >pretentious
          It's literally an explanation with examples you fricking midwit.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Cope, all useful information is preserved

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            Seethe, it's doesn't name any events. It's like asking why Napoleon lost the war and saying because Britain was against him and one day he lost.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            He waged war against like every country and lost, the rest is just details

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            >the rest is just details
            c**t you're on a history board.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            The question is whether or not the shorter explanation suffices to communicate all relevant information, which it does

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            There's shorter explanations, and then there's gross simplifications. The 'textwall' is no bigger than a paragraph at best.

            The Anglos blew up everyone elses navies and then their lead was too big so no one could catch up but then Japs and Mutts did eventually
            There, no need for pretentious textwalls

            this on the otherhand, you can interpret as Britain going from port to port, reaving the Atlantic and constantly building ships til one day they couldn't.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            I can't believe this thread got detailed because

            Can you repeat this but in English

            wants a babbie's tl:dr and

            The Anglos blew up everyone elses navies and then their lead was too big so no one could catch up but then Japs and Mutts did eventually
            There, no need for pretentious textwalls

            is throwing a pretentious tantrum over word count in explanations on a fricking IQfy board.

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            I'm not the one throwing a tantrum, just explaining what everyone is seething over

        • 2 years ago
          Anonymous

          >There, no need for pretentious textwalls
          read a fricking book, christ

          • 2 years ago
            Anonymous

            No

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Here:
        >The Spanish lost their attempt with the Armada. The French couldn't just go all-out on Navy since they also had to maintained sizeable land armies against the various fronts. Everybody else never built enough ships to challenge the British. (Ignore the Glorious Revolution were the Prince of Orange was invited by Parliament).

        >The French Revolutionary + Napoleonic Wars saw the British crush virtually every fleet (The Nile, Copenhagen, and famously Trafalgar). For the rest of the war, no navy would be able to assemble or concentrate enough ships in the Dover to challenge the British control of the home seas. Because of the huge head start Trafalgar gave the British, they were able to continue building on their naval arms advantage. It's why the ironclads and dreadnought revolutions were important, because they effectively reset the race back to 0 ships for everyone and theoretically another country could build enough ships to overwhelm the British (like the battleship race). This lead also gave the British invaluable expertise in shipbuilding, seafaring, and sailors that was unrivaled. Having an experienced military and passing on that knowledge to future generations is vastly underestimated, but also a huge boon to the British Navy post-Napoleon.

        >The British established the 2-navy standard and was able to maintain it thanks to its strong economy/empire. This meant the British maintained enough battleships to rival the next 2 largest powers (typically France + Russia). No other country had the economic output or military necessity to fund such a huge naval program, since France/Russia had to also maintain far larger land armies than the British.

        >It wasn't until the Washington Naval Treaties post-WW1 when the British had to acknowledge the rise of US/Japan that any other country started having comparable fleet sizes to the British.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        what the hell was wrong with what he wrote?

  2. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Because they are shitty useless islands. Of course France could have crushed this kingdom but for what? Sheep? Rain?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      rent freeee

  3. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Romans in 55 BC
    Normans 1066
    Dutch in 1688

    Probably more.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Live though Holy Roman Empire.

  4. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    He did build enough ships (or at least the combined Franco-Spanish navy was sizable enough), but the British Navy simply took them in battle.

  5. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    The Spanish built more than enough ships, they just fricked it up + got hit with some really bad weather at an inopportune moment.

  6. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    It was less a matter of building ships, and more about lacking the means to train sailors.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      Britain always had a vastly lower population than France alone though. Let alone half of Europe

  7. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    >French Empire
    >1808
    >Picture of Napoleon as First Consul

  8. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    English naval dominance goes back to the Hundred Years war. People fawn over Crecy, Poitiers and Agincourt, but the true longlasting British victory was the initial raids on the ports of Flanders carried out by Edward III. At that point, France had the largest, most powerful navy in Western Europe, but experienced English sailors managed to defeat them decisively in the first year of the HYW, thus establishing English dominance of the European Atlantic coast. They would maintain that dominance up until the 17th century.
    >How did no european empire manage to build enough ships to invade Britain
    Look up the Second Anglo-Dutch war and the Glorious Revolution.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      yeah I doubt a medieval navy ever lost 16000 men lmao

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        Kalka river 1223.
        50-60k dead according to most reliable sources.
        It didn't happen often, but sometimes in Medieval history you'll encounter a bad wipeout like this one.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      The casualties and loss is bullshit, it’s literally one record from an english monk 10 years after the event, the very same battle happenened 2 years before (Arnemuiden) and the french won with similar casualties on both sides.

  9. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    you've got just keep thrashing everybody else's navy so that the people who might rival you either die young or stay on land
    after enough time, the experience gap will be overwhelming
    it also helps that they had lots of old oak trees, which make great ships, and were able to get more hardwood trees from their american colonies

  10. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Britain went absolutely all in with naval power, as an island that relied on thalassocracy that makes perfect sense. For its enemies to catch up they would have needed to devote practically their entire economy to the naval build up, and due to the huge amount of time and infrastructure needed for that kind of build-up Britain would have all the time it needed to notice the other nations expansion and match it, or negotiate with them to get them to stop, or embargo them, or find some other way to frick them over (international politics was a lot more fun before nukes).
    >tl;dr - by the time any other European power had built a new capital ship Britain would have built two or three more

  11. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    yea it must have been a lot more complicated to build a fleet than i thought. because britain didn't even have the biggest population among europeans but they still apparently had a big enough IQ to just build more ships? i don't get it.

    when i play eu4 i just build like 3x their heavies and then i beat them navally in late game.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      nevermind the first post answered the question. still strange to me that no one could build a comparable fleet until after ww1 but i guess that's how it really worked.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        > no one could build a comparable fleet until after ww1
        The issue by post-WW1 was that the US and Japan were rapidly rising on the world stage and the British Empire was no longer as profitable as it once was combined with general WW1 devastation and loss of manpower. There was also an acknowledgement that one of the main causes of WW1 was the naval arms race between Britain and Germany, that led to tense militarization.

        American industry and resources were a rising juggernaut, as was Japan. The Washington Naval Treaty sought to limit the costly naval arms race so Britain, US, and Japan wouldn't just build up massive fleets of battleships and aircraft carriers that would spiral out of control and lead to another bloody war.

        By this time, Britain and the US had a close diplomatic relationship due to similar ideological pursuits (open markets, free navigable water ways, liberal trading policies, democracy). The US and Britain also had to maintain large fleets in both the Atlantic and Pacific. Japan, in contrast, only had to maintain a single fleet in the Pacific. This led to the 5:5:3 rule (US:Britain:Japan) where Britain and US could have a ratio of 5:3 in battleships for US/Britain to Japan's. The British had to acknowledge the rising industrial capacity of the US/Japan, while the Japanese got to have localized naval superiority in the Pacific (3 to 2.5) and prevent the US from leveraging it's massive industry to build more battleships in the Pacific. At least that was the thinking.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      nevermind the first post answered the question. still strange to me that no one could build a comparable fleet until after ww1 but i guess that's how it really worked.

      Building ships in RL takes a hell of a lot more work than just giving the orders for them (i.e. you clicking the button in EU4). You've got to build up the industrial infrastructure to construct them, requiring specialised - and expensive - port facilities and a large number of ancillary industries on top of that. Then you've got to get hold of the raw materials needed for them, either a lot of wood (of sufficient quality) or a lot of steel (same) depending on the era. If you were planning on building large numbers of wooden ships it may well take literal centuries for the wood to grow for them. Then you've got to actually build up and maintain the skillset needed to design and produce ships - which is a lot more work than you might think.
      >tl;dr - there are always going to be a lot more factors in RL than even a relatively complex game like EU4 can represent.
      >Also, as fun as they can be Paradox games are not historical sources.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >because britain didn't even have the biggest population among europeans
      Their population wasn't the largest, but it comparable to other European countries. During the Napoleonic Wars, Great Britain had 12 million, France had 38 million, Russia had 30 million. UK also had an advantage in colonies and resource extraction, meaning they could acquires the resources necessary to build ships much more easily than France/Russia. Also consider that in Russia's case, the vast majority of their population were serfs dedicated to farming/agriculture, which meant the Russians had poor industry. France had a sizable manpower, and could build ships, but they also consistently lost naval battles to the British during the Napoleonic Wars which were huge set backs.

      >but they still apparently had a big enough IQ to just build more ships?
      Yeah. That's intellectual capital (or expertise). The British had the largest navy, which meant they had superior shipbuilders/sailors/naval expertise and could then pass on that expertise to future generations. This meant they could consistently win naval battles, and maintain their naval superiority. Other countries couldn't just fully invest in their navies like the UK did, since they had to maintain huge land armies and lacked the profitable colonial empire to support it.

      It's the same reason why Taiwan/SK dominates microchip fabrication today despite, in your argument, their extremely small population. They invested huge amounts into develop that expertise over the last 50 years, and has consistently invested to maintain that lead over their competitors. The engineers, experts, and expertise are invaluable to maintaining that dominance. US and China can invest billions to try and catch up, but it will still take years or decades.

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >when i play eu4 i just build like 3x their heavies and then i beat them navally in late game.

  12. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Why not just install massive artillery pieces at the strait of dover and fire at any ship that comes close as you land?

    • 2 years ago
      Anonymous

      >Why not just install massive artillery pieces at the strait of dover and fire at any ship that comes close as you land?
      Costly static defenses. Can't project any military power outside of home islands. Also means you cede strategic initiative to the enemy, who can now just blockade your island and deny you access to your colonial empire and overseas holdings.

      Between spending the money to build a fort that the enemy can easily circumnavigate by literally landing somewhere else, or a battleship that can sail around the world, lead offensive maneuvers, transport goods/soldiers... I mean, it's a no brainier.

      • 2 years ago
        Anonymous

        No I meant the French should have done that instead of rushing into the gigantic swamp that is Russia hoping for a honorable duel or whatever.

  13. 2 years ago
    Anonymous

    Not sure if it counts, but pajeets conquered England without firing a shot or building a fleet.

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