Who are the Britians?

Part Who are the British and why are they so..British.
Today we are use to the image of the British being the second best, to America, they matter, but they are ultimately inferior to the US, but in the early 1900s, Britain was the single most powerful nation in the entire world. The nation had only a small population of only around 30 million (compared to the 40 million of Germany, or the 300 million of Russia), but that’s just the Island, cause they owned the single largest Empire in HUMAN HISTORY, single largest nation ever made, bar none, not counting the British themselves, 458 million people were under their control, and again that isn’t counting China, and owned, apart from England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, colonies all over the world. The owned more colonies in Africa than any other European nation, which is almost one third of all Africa, India, most of South East Asia, and had footholds in the middle east as well, and the single largest "sphere of influence" (read colony) in China, larger than all the other nation's spheres combined, with an actual colony in Hong Kong. They had the entire continent of Australia, the massive nation of Canada, all of Tibet, about half of the Caribbean, as well as New Zealand and New Guinea. here is a map of the British Empire in 1914, this map does not count the British puppet states in china, which are under British control, so in realty the Empire is even bigger. The British conquest of the world is something of an enigma, in that the actual English is tiny, the Germans could never understand how only 500,000 English troops were able to occupy India, with over 200 million. Even with guns and cannons, England should have been overwhelmed, but the British were clever (Cruel), and in all of the colonies, the various ethnic, religious and cultural groups were pitted against each other to prevent the nation from unifying, thus allowing the British to run the nation through puppet, and the British were the only European nation who actually benefited from their colonies economically. The British also instilled a sense of loyalty in their dominated people, as they actually made some effort to improve the lives of some of their people. Thus, while the British were still cruel and racist, they were better than other Europeans (Belgium, France, Belgium, Germany, Belgium ect). Britain could call upon a massive amount of manpower, resources and money from their many colonies, and everybody else felt that England owned too much and shared too little. English culture is worth pointing out, the English place a strong emphasis on being right, their is little tolerance for those who are frivolous or silly, British humor for example, people being embarrassed in public is seen as hilarious, because its something that everybody tries to avoid. Displaying emotions in public, bragging, and in particular, complaining are frowned upon. Stubbornness is a very important virtue, as the British, much like Rome, would always "solider one", and it is this mindset more than anything else that allowed England to dominate, the British simply didn't give up. They have a reputation for being cold and cynical, mostly that’s just a culture that doesn’t want to express emotions publicly, through if you look at British humor, its mean. The British military was famous for both its ruthlessness (beating was common) but also for its relative leniency, a commoner joining the army could get farther than he could in the French forces for example (this is before the war). The officers of the British army were all nobility, but they were nobility who were trained from birth to assume positions of leaderships, unlike the French or Russian nobility. This was weakening by the time of 1914, as England had a Parliament, and was a constitutional monarchy, allowing commoners to gain more power. It was the British navy however that they were most famous for, as this Island could take over nations worlds away, larger than all of the other European navies combined by the time of WWI, through it was a little outdated, the British had the most sea experience. You could defeat them on land (with some difficulty) but they were almost unbeatable at sea. Finally, Colin Murtha read this and said I was sucking up to the British and my anglophile nature was showing through, so I feel obligated to mock them, so bear in mind, as cool as the British are, you have to remember, as the largest empire, they almost solely responsible for almost every problem of the modern world. We blame America a lot, but we have only been really annoying in the last fifty years, the British are responsible for the Israel/Palestine conflict, the Pakistan/Indian conflict, almost everything in Africa (Rwanda/South Africa), the problems in Ireland and the fall of China.