Author: Xusheng source: Xusheng (official account id:lxlong20) has been reproduced with authorization

A few days ago, I wrote an article “who is speculating about the decline of Britain”, which caused a lot of controversy. That Britain refers to today’s Britain, and today this Britain refers to the Empire where the sun never sets.

The glory of the British Empire does not need to be mentioned. It has grown from the three British islands to the sun never sets. It is the first super empire in the cycle of industrial civilization. It has established its own school in science, technology, territory and finance. Of course, there are also a few big stains on the glory (slave trade in Africa, Indian massacre in America, opium trade in East Asia).

The key to the decline of the sun never sets Empire lies in the two countries – the United States and India.

The United States and India have brought down the British Empire, even using very similar tactics.

American unique skill: brave and cunning

Indian unique skill: cunning and brave

01 ?????

At the peak of the British Empire, the territory mainly includes North America, Australia, South Asia and Southeast Asia. In addition, there are colonies in Africa, the Middle East and South America. The sun never sets. It is called the sun never sets Empire, which is very unique in history.

There is no enduring empire in the world. In the long history, the disintegration of the British Empire began with the independence of the United States and ended with the independence of India.

The American War of independence broke out in 1775. At that time, the 13 colonies in North America were very weak, and there were not many people (and a considerable number of people were pro British). The militia led by Washington is far from the opponent of the professional soldiers of the British Empire, but the United States dares to raise its flag to make a revolution and is very brave; Or there is a bit of “brutality” in its genes, and it dares to do anything.

However, the United States did not act recklessly, but skillfully with a very cunning wrist. The founders skillfully used two key internal and external tactics——

With regard to internal tactics, the declaration of independence was made to occupy the moral highland and highlight two main points:

The first point is to declare North America free. This was later deified. In fact, at that time, most countries in the world were monarchies, and the constitutional monarchy of the British Empire was a relatively free system. But the United States dares to raise its voice and wants absolute freedom. In fact, those bigwigs who signed the declaration of independence can enjoy the considerate service of their slaves when they go home after the meeting.

At that time, the freedom in the declaration of independence was only the freedom of white people. Trump is now giving priority to the United States. In a sense, it is similar to the ideas of the leaders who signed the declaration of independence. They take advantage of themselves first.

The second point is to make a high-profile claim that Britain collects taxes too hard in North America. In fact, the tax revenue of Britain in North America was not higher than that of Britain at that time. The reason why Britain wanted to increase taxes in North America was that local businessmen were dissatisfied with the low tax collection in the colonies. However, the North American elite took the tax as an excuse to rise. Today, it is similar to trump’s idea that tiktok threatens the security of the United States.

You may wonder why Britain should increase taxes? Because the British Empire wanted to conquer India, fight and burn money.

From another angle, Britain forced the United States to conquer India.

The declaration of independence has nothing wrong with these two internal points. At that time, it was a bit unreasonable, and it also showed the cunning of the North American elite. But their real cunning lies in making full use of international contradictions.

Foreign tactics, skillfully contact British enemies, and establish an anti British alliance.

02 ??

Relying solely on the repeatedly defeated militias led by Washington, the United States has a high probability of losing its independence. The most critical force is foreign aid.

In February 1778, France and the United States signed a military alliance treaty, and then declared war on the British Empire. According to current thinking, this is a typical way to contact hostile forces (France) against the home country (Britain).

Spain and the Netherlands followed France and declared war on Britain.

The North American War of independence thus became a full-scale war between the French led European “support forces” and the British forces.

The decisive battle of Yorktown took place in 1781, which was described in textbooks all over the world. However, there was basically no mention of the war process, and the British Army surrendered in a muddle headed way. In fact, the land war in York town was not large, and the key part was the naval battle; The naval battle was a bitter struggle between the French fleet and the British fleet.

We can see the weight of the French from the people who accept surrender.

There are three signatories of the demoted Party:

Washington on behalf of the United States;

The other two are count rochanbo, who represents the French army, and count Grasse, who represents the Navy.

The European allied forces, especially Louis XVI, helped the United States achieve independence with the power of the entire French Empire.

Louis XVI exerted too much force, which led to the financial crisis in France, and then suffered from famine. The French Revolution broke out, and Louis XVI was finally guillotined by the revolutionary party.

It can be said that Louis XVI made no less contribution than Washington in the process of American independence. Or to put it another way, the United States has made maximum use of the international pattern to make tricks.

To understand the United States, we must understand its brutality and cleverness. Taking trump as an example, it is very rude to launch a trade war, expel the Chinese Consulate General in Houston and suppress Chinese enterprises. On the other hand, trump took advantage of India’s hostility towards China to allow American enterprises to seize the land in India while India was trying to embarrass Chinese enterprises. This is a clever trick. We should not just look at the brutality or coincidence of the United States, but look at it dialectically.

Back to business, you may wonder why Louis XVI, as the emperor of France and not a philanthropist, must help the United States become independent? Because he hated that Britain stole the overseas colonies of France, especially India.

Britain wants to monopolize India and urge France to fully help the United States achieve independence.

On September 3, 1783, representatives of Britain and the United States signed the Paris Treaty of “peace, friendship, fairness and justice” at the palace of Versailles in Louis XVI. Britain officially recognized the independence of the United States.

The world, the US emperor is coming!

At that time, the territory of the United States was only 800000 square kilometers, less than one tenth of today’s territory. Also in 1783, after Britain recognized the independence of the United States, it sent a super gift package to the United States and announced that it would open more than 1.5 million square kilometers of land (including today’s Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama) from the British Canadian border in the north, the Mississippi River in the West and the Florida border in the south to the Spanish colony to the United States!

In fact, Britain wanted to reconcile with the United States by giving a large area of territory to the United States, because at that time Britain was still concentrating on conquering India. If it were not for India, it would not be difficult for the British Empire to suppress the North American uprising.

If Britain can see the historical trend in the future, it is impossible to allow the United States to become independent in any case. Maybe it is possible to move the royal family to North America. In the eyes of Britain, the value of South Asia is much higher than that of North America.

Because India and Britain increased taxes, which forced the United States to rebel.

Because India and Britain did not concentrate on suppressing the American rebellion.

Because India and Britain recognized the independence of the United States and tried to win over the United States.

03 ????

The temptation of India began in 1453, when the Ottoman Turks captured Constantinople and blocked the trade channel between the East and the West. Then the West began its great voyage, trying to find a way to the east from the ocean.

The European economic center shifted from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.

Spain and Portugal are at the forefront of the Iberian peninsula where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic. Columbus, on behalf of Spain, discovered the new American continent in 1492, and dagama, on behalf of Portugal, arrived in India in 1498 and plundered the Malabar Coast (Zhenghe passed there more than 40 years earlier than dagama, without any offense).

Then the Portuguese, Dutch, French and British arrived in the South Asian continent one after another, engaged in trade, robbery and occupation of territory, and all had their own East India Company (all built in the 17th century), which shows the temptation of India to European countries at that time!

At the beginning, people ran horses to enclose the land, and they could make sure that the well water did not invade the river. In the 18th century, all the good places were almost occupied, and the great powers began to carry out brutal knockout competitions through war.

Portugal and the Netherlands were weaker and were eliminated first.

Finally, Britain and France competed for global colonial hegemony, and reached a climax in the seven-year War (1756-1763). Whoever wins will get the monopoly to conquer India alone. This is just like the decisive battle between Zhu Yuanzhang and chenyouliang. The winner will gain the monopoly of anti yuan alone.

In the seven-year war in the Indian War Zone, the most classic battle took place in 1757, the decisive battle between the British East India Company and the king of Bangladesh.

The British East India Company has only 900 British soldiers and 2000 Indians. Bangladesh has a 70000 strong army, and France supports 53 cannons and 40 gunners. There is a big gap in the book value. But the war turned out to be a complete victory for the British East India Company. At the cost of 22 deaths and 53 injuries, the British defeated the Bangladeshi army and occupied the fertile Ganges delta (now Bangladesh).

Can this also be called a showdown? Yes, this is the decisive battle.

The reasons for Britain’s victory are as follows:

First, the East India Company bought many Bangladeshi generals; Secondly, when the war began, it rained heavily, and the gunpowder of the Bengal and French armies was affected by damp (at that time, they were all front loaded guns), while the gunpowder of the British army was covered with waterproof cloth in advance and kept intact.

The most critical reason is the military organization.

In the process of British conquest of India, Indian natives were hired as soldiers (called soil soldiers), and the officers were British. This will reduce the local forces’ rejection of the British army.

France has organized Indian soldiers and French soldiers separately, and it is easy for Indian soldiers to be out of control in the war.

This is the difference between sea power Empire and land power empire. It was also a colonial conquest, and the British conquest was more artistic.

The result of the seven-year war was that France was defeated and Britain drove the French forces out of India.

So France hated Britain so much that Louis XVI was desperate to help the United States achieve independence. From the perspective of the great historical cycle, American independence is the result of the global hegemony between Britain and France, and also the result of the first round of decisive battle between sea power (Britain) and land power (France).

Britain allowed the United States to become independent and even gave the United States a piece of land to show friendship, just not wanting to delay the great cause of conquering India.

04 ????

After the war of praxi, the battle of Buxar in 1764, the battle of changgama in 1767, the attack on malat in 1775 (the year of American independence), the battle of potonov in 1781 (the year when the British army lost the decisive battle in York town), and the battle of Nagpur in 1817, the British army won many battles against the Mughal Empire, and always won more with fewer.

In the face of such fertile land and uninterrupted victory, Britain is like a prostitute who meets a famous prostitute, can’t stop, and continuously invests resources.

As a foreign conqueror, the main reason why Britain was so successful was that India was too special.

Although Britain was a foreign conqueror, the Mughal Empire was also a foreign conqueror. For thousands of years, the South Asian continent has attracted Aryans, Persians, Macedonians, Cypriots, big moons, Turks, Arabs, ghaznis, Afghans and so on to conquer like attractive beauties.

Indian history is a history written by conquerors.

As for the Indian natives, they have been brainwashed by the conquerors and fantasize about becoming Brahmans or white sacred cows in the afterlife. So it is very easy to bribe Indian generals or local elites in the process of British conquest, and even Indians are willing to cooperate with the British who are lavish.

Due to the limited population of Britain, Britain would cede the management of the conquered land to the Indian nobility, and only seize the military and financial power. In this way, the powerful people in the conquered areas seemed to have little to lose. Moreover, compared with the previous conquerors, Britain also vigorously developed India, helped India build railways on a large scale, and improved India’s infrastructure.

Through the spiritual victory method, Indians believe that the British are not conquerors, but help India to work. (I have always thought that if Lu Xun was an Indian, ah q’s true story would certainly not be an article, nor a book, but a series of books. Because of this idea, India does not hate Britain now.).

It can be said that Britain has made a lot of money in running India, and of course the return is also very rich.

By 1913, before the first World War, India, with its huge size (300million people), was on a par with Japan, which was initially industrialized at that time, and better than the Qing Empire. The fiscal revenue of the British and Indian governments is about 100million pounds, roughly half of that of the British mainland, and basically the same in Asia and Japan.

India has become a veritable pearl on the crown of the British Empire!

However, in the process of British conquest and construction of India, the United States grew rapidly and replaced Britain as the world’s largest country in industrial production and commercial trade, directly shaking the foundation of the British Empire.

In the first World War, the British Empire was unable to cope with the rising star Germany. Although India has a large population and rich resources, Indians are too busy to help Britain on the battlefield.

Not only that, but what bothered Britain most was that India began to seek independence after the first World War.

You may wonder that India has been ruled by conquerors for thousands of years. In contrast, the British were more conscientious among the conquerors. Why does India want independence? The answer is that India has mutated.

05 ????

As we all know, Indians have no war genes and cannot follow the route of the American War of independence. India did not experience the test of blood and fire in the process of independence. It was Gandhi who led a group of Indians to succeed through the non violent and non cooperative movement.

What is nonviolent non cooperation? Even if you hit me, I will not fight back; You scold me, I pretend not to hear; But I just didn’t listen to you and sat there with you. Because Indians are used to meditating hard, they also have the unique knowledge of yoga, and they can not care about this life; So no one consumes as much energy as Indians.

Gandhi, the leader of the nonviolent uncooperative movement, was born in 1869; Shy, timid and disciplined since childhood; At the age of 13, he married an illiterate girl of the same age at the order of his parents. He was a devout Hindu all his life. He went to Europe to study at the end of the 19th century and returned to India as a lawyer. Gandhi did not succeed in his early career as a lawyer. He went to South Africa again and felt the pain of racial discrimination. In 1915, he returned to India again and began to visit the South Asian continent.

At the end of the first World War in 1919, Gandhi devoted himself to the political field and started the road of non violent non cooperation movement, that is, the road of Indian independence.

If Washington dared to take up a gun and go to the battlefield in a weak situation during American independence, it showed unparalleled courage; It is unparalleled cunning for Gandhi to lead hundreds of millions of people in India to drive India’s independence through the non violent and non cooperative movement.

After the beginning of the war of independence, Washington was able to assess the situation and make effective use of favorable resources at home and abroad, showing unparalleled cunning; Gandhi showed his unparalleled courage by persisting unswervingly in the non violent and non cooperative movement for more than 20 years.

It is easy to understand that Washington’s military independence is moving towards success. But to understand Gandhi’s nonviolent way of leading India to independence requires a lot of brain cells.

06 ??????

As we all know, the key step in the establishment of the Republic was Mao Zedong’s Sinicization of Marxism Leninism. What about India?

Gandhi’s nonviolent thought did not originate from Indian culture, but from the Christian world, mainly influenced by Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy is remembered as a great Russian writer. His works such as war and peace and resurrection have a great international influence (I think he is the most outstanding literary giant in the Soviet Union (Russia); Especially “Resurrection”, which puts the soul of a 70 year old man into a 30-year-old body, does not feel disharmonious at all, and the whole sermon is not boring).

In fact, Tolstoy was a great thinker. Two more words here: in the history of Russia, there are two thinkers dressed in literature. One is Dostoevsky. His thought is quite fierce, which has influenced Nietzsche’s Superman Philosophy (Hitler is also a believer in Superman Philosophy), and can be regarded as affecting the West. The other is Tolstoy, whose thought is relatively balanced and has influenced eastern India. These two figures correspond to the double headed eagle on the national emblem of Russia.

Tolstoy was born into a big landlord family and was famous all over the world. In fact, he was very miserable all his life (at the end of tsarist Russia, there was a great gap between the rich and the poor, social unrest, and people suffering). However, he was unable to change the status quo, so he went to find comfort in Christian thought. Finally, he reconciled Christ’s thought of salvation with the painful reality, and developed a non violent and non cooperative thought, which was equivalent to warning everyone to stay away from “evil”.

In order to practice his faith (Non Violence and non cooperation), Tolstoy left his luxurious and comfortable home in his later years (equivalent to breaking away from the past), went to find the “Tao” in his heart, and finally died on the road.

The above paragraph is a bit boring. If you are not interested, you can skip it. In short, Tolstoy had a great influence on Gandhi.

Gandhi thought that Tolstoy’s thought of Non Violence and non cooperation was very suitable for India, so he extended it from Tolstoy’s personal behavior to the action of the whole country in India.

Gandhi’s version of the non violent non cooperation movement is equivalent to the combination of Christ’s salvation thought and Indian characteristics to complete the hinduization of Christian thought (later, Martin Luther King changed it to the black affirmative movement). In fact, this idea is to tell Indians who love to think hard that Indians and British are equal in the ideology of Christ’s salvation.

Before Britain recognized this fact, it was “evil” for Indians to cooperate with the British.

No cooperation means no evil.

If Britain (the suzerain state) recognizes the equality of both sides, it means recognizing India’s independence.

This idea will certainly not succeed in other countries, but it has achieved great success in India, attracting a large number of elites to join, the most typical being Nehru.

Even in India, this idea is difficult to succeed at other times. But after the first World War, the British Empire was in decline, and the United States was on its way to the top. After the Second World War, the British Empire was crumbling and the United States was at its zenith.

As a successful capitalist and a new hegemon of sea power, the United States must gain the world monetary hegemony and let the dollar replace the pound (completed at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944). However, in order to truly make the US dollar a world hegemonic currency, the British colonial system must be completely disintegrated and the foundation of sterling circulation must be destroyed. The key link is India’s independence.

As long as India is independent, the sun of the Empire will set. Britain is not reconciled, but it has been unable to return to heaven. In 1947, the third year after the surrender of British pound hegemony, Britain had to recognize India’s independence.

In this way, the British Empire was tossed and scattered by the United States and India, and fell in the long river of history. On the other hand, the big power game has been very cruel since ancient times, and it is still very cruel now.

07 ????

After independence, India and the Soviet Union (Russia) enjoyed good relations. In addition to receiving great assistance from the Soviet Union (Russia), there are many similarities between Hinduism and orthodox culture. The ideological inheritance between Tolstoy and Gandhi is an example. So this time India is making trouble, and Russia is selling arms and sending troops. In fact, both are the embodiment of bilateral relations.

But in terms of system, India and the United States come down in one continuous line. So India’s top talents flow to Britain and the United States. The top wage earners in the United States are Indians first. At this stage, both Google and Microsoft are at the helm of India, and Indian thinking is rapidly moving closer to the United States. Because the system and thinking are similar, India’s behavior style is also like that of the United States, which is often unreasonable and arrogant.

Now there is a view that as long as China’s strength continues to grow, the United States and India will not continue to be arrogant. In fact, it is a big mistake. The arrogance and cunning of the United States and India will not change, but their strength will be different in different forms. Therefore, both the United States and India should understand their arrogance and adapt to their cunning.