Every Country Britain HAS NOT Invaded – map by Indy100 ()
Great Britain (or England, The United Kingdom, etc.) has possessed large international status and power for a number of centuries. Their early industrialization coupled with aspirations to dominate on the global level have led to these unrivaled amounts of invasion and colonization across the globe. Just 22 countries have not been invaded by Britain, highlighted in purple on this map: Andora, Belarus, Bolivia, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Guatemala, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mali, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Mongolia, Paraguay, Sao Tome and Principe, Sweden, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Vatican City. Invading 171 out of 193 total countries worldwide is not a small feat, and the extent of this is emphasized in this map in which nearly the entire land area of the globe is shaded pink (meaning at one point invaded by Britain). For context, the United States has only invaded 68 total countries in its existence (although a much shorter time frame than Britain). This map effectively tells a story about the longstanding worldwide power of Great Britain, while staying as minimal as possible by conveying one simple statistic.
For centuries, the power of the British Empire allowed the nation to expand their territory and take advantage of areas that possessed useful resources. Colonization and the European “race” to take control of native peoples/regions in Africa and the Americas spanned for centuries, leading to invasions of most of the nations on those continents in a very short period of time. This wasn’t anything absurd for a powerful European nation from the 16th-18th centuries. Belgium and France were very present in Africa and Portugal and the Netherlands set their eyes on the sugar of the Americas. England, however, aimed for both and more as they had industrialized rapidly and were power hungry. The British Empire’s mission to show their industrial strength and assert dominance was their main motive, but it isn’t the same for all invasions. Each specific country/region has its own history and circumstances that cannot be shown on this map. The arrival of the British often meant a different thing depending on where it was. Some were taken advantage of by Europeans for their crops while others for slave trade or territorial dominance.
Examples of context differences when it comes to this map could be the United States (Revolutionary War period), colonization of Africa in the 19th century, and the World Wars. All of these have their own circumstantial differences and are relevant in different ways to Britain. The United States was a revolution against Britain in which they fought for control of the states, colonization in Africa lead to the slave trade and was based around resources and military control, and both World Wars consisted of many invasions by the British army across Europe. The reasons for these three individual invasions differ greatly, as they do with all 171. The map also cannot take into account the frequency, as while some African or Central American nations were raided just once, many European nations held several battles during the World Wars. This is not a problem – the map still gets its point across very efficiently, but its simplicity ignores important history of the very country it means to highlight and leaves the viewer with questions on this very topic.
The map breaks down centuries of history while simultaneously being as simple as possible, as it is just merely a world map with two different colors. Although not describing each individual invasion whatsoever or providing context, the map depicts the power of Britain throughout history in a concise and direct way. The choice to not include additional information about every country’s invasion is an intriguing one, as well as not possessing any labels or legends. The lack of this information forces questions such as: “How could one country possibly handle this?” or “When and why did Great Britain invade Thailand?”, dragging the viewer of this map into a rabbit hole of research and questions that make this map especially compelling. Britain has indeed invaded 90% of the countries in the world today, and this map is made into a very effective and simple way of conveying that statistic.
Works Cited
Kottke, Jason. “Britain Has Invaded All but 22 Countries.” Kottke.org, 16 November 2012, Accessed 13 October 2023.
Vesey, Joe. “A map of every country Britain has ever invaded.” Indy100, 23 December 2018, Accessed 13 October 2023.
