This question is prompted by something said in another thread in "The World Around Us". There it was suggested that the Boer War marked the beginning of the end of the British Empire - a view I don't share, though obviously, the immense difficulty that Britain had defeating about 25,000 Boers made the country and the Empire briefly something of a laughing-stock in the Continental Europe.

My hunch is that by the end of WWI the Empire was in decline, despite the fact that it made substantial territorial gains. (It's not unknown for an empire to carry on expanding when it's passed its peak).

Anyway, I wonder what others think.

I recently read that the seminal moment when the Empire began the descent was it's experience in India with the Sepoy rebellion. The Sepoy soldiers, loyal to Great Britian, had refused to use rifle cartridges that required biting off the end of waterproofed paper that contained the gunpowder charge. The waterproofing was provided by pork fat which, for religious reasons, they refused to touch.
The insistence of the Brits, combined with their insensitivity to the religious objections of the Sepoy's, caused riots and the outright murder of thousands of formerly loyal soldiers.
I would like to be more specific on the historical aspects but don't have the research materials at hand.
Maybe someone else can verify or refute??

Not long after the ending of WW1 the Republic of Ireland gained some independance from the British Empire, though the Republic didn't fully break away until sometime in the 1930's. This could bee seen as the begining of the end.
With the ending of WW2 and Britians lack of cash probably was the final nail in the coffin

I read in the novel "King Rat" by Clavel something along the lines of this.........The soldiers returning home from the battle fields had decided that no more would they be held in bondage by the English caste system [not a direct quote but close enough to the idea presented].
I think that perhaps once men started to question their alloted place in society that was the time that the Empire started to falter.
" They taught us all a deal of umbleness—not much else that I know of, from morning to night. We was to be umble to this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters!" From "David Copperfield" by Dickens.

I would probably date the decline of the Empire from the 1870's and onwards.
During this decade the USA and the Germans got their acts together, and the British were economically challenged at first and later militarily by the Germans.
This I suppose all started when the USA ended their civil war in 1865 and then Germany unified in 1871. Britain's military reputation took a severe knock during the Boer war and the Germans, in particular, took note.
I can't help thinking that some British politicians began to lose heart a bit after the Boer war, and maybe lost some of that jingoistic swagger that they had before. Still, the Germans had to be shown that the Empire still ruled the waves and a crazy ship building programme started on both sides of the North Sea (a bit familiar to the nuclear arms race later on during the century).
We all know the outcome and fall-out from the First World War. As mentioned earlier, Britain's overseas territory actually expanded, thanks to the League of Nations mandates (Palestine, Trans-Jordan, Iraq etc.)
But the fact remained that Great Britain was severely weakened after WW1, and her Empire weaker than her subject peoples even realised. This is now known as the 'Grand Illusion', basically the British were bluffing.
In 1942 the bluff was called by the Japanese, who walked straight into Singapore unopposed. By 1945 the British were exhausted economically, and even morally had to now recognise the independence and free-will of its subjects.
Once India was granted her independence in 1947, the Empire was in effect finished, and within the next twenty years it really was all over.

Thanks for the clarification, Mugaboo. Now I know a bit more of history.

Oops, a correction. My figure for the size of the British Army on the eve of WWI (previous post) is too high. The figure should be about 710,000 and this includes the Territorials.

A further thought about "losing heart". If this had really been the case, then one would have expected endless dithering in August, 1914. The politicians dithered for about 72 hours. They needed, after all, to make Britain's entry into the war acceptable to the public. Once it was clear that the Germans were invading Belgium, the necessary ultimatum was issued without much delay.

"I can't help thinking that some British politicians began to lose heart a bit after the Boer war, and maybe lost some of that jingoistic swagger that they had before"

Ok, I hold my hands up to the above statement, bit I did say SOME politicians certainly not all. The way the British government of the time threw themselves into this war certainly suggests that you were correct in your previous two posts.
The nationalistic fervour and naivety (the whole nation, including most politicians, actually thought the war would be over by Christmas) that swept the across the nation in 1914, certainly made the decision for the politicians to declare war on Germany a very simple one.

I think that for "loss of heart" in Britain one would might look at the 1930s and the premierships of Ramsay MacDonald, Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain. Nevertheless, they were monumnetally confident in their bungling and incompetence ...

I have heard and read that for many people the first real shock was the fall of Singapore in January, 1942; the second, the 1949 devaluation of the pound (by about 28.5%) and the third - Suez.

Never underrate the zest for self-deception on the part of British politicians, the British public and the media (owned in no small part by ex-pats with their very own, very rose-tinted yearnings for a Britain that doesn't exist).

As for real "loss of heart", for a perception of irreversible decline in Britain's fortunes sense of irreversible decline one needs, I think, to look at the period when the British Empire was breaking up - in other words, even later.

A little note on the British Army. Yes, even in Britain it was widely regarded as a bit of a joke in the second half of the 19th century. What on earth does one make of an army where (until 1870) officers (up to and including the rank of lieutant-colonel) purchased their commissions and where merit went unrewarded.

Nevertheless, somehow the army got its act together. Certainly, by the time of Battle of the Somme (1916) I doubt if anyone anywhere still thought the British Army was a joke.

Few empire decline in a straight line.

"Few empire decline in a straight line"

That's true enough but this statement got me thinking. Was Great Britain the only nation that voluntarily gave her Empire away? As far as I know all previous empires that have existed throughout history, have always lost them in the end by force of arms.
The British generally handed their former territories back without too much bloodshed, as opposed to the French who had two major guerrilla wars to contend with in Indo-China and Algeria.
But can you think of any other empire that was voluntarily handed back to its rightful owners, ie: the indigenous peoples of each territory?

I'm not sure that "voluntarily" is the best word. The obvious example of the relatively peaceful breakup of an empire is that of the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe in 1989. The only country that experienced serious violence was Romania, and that resulted from local circumstances. It wasn't a matter of the Soviets fighting Romanians.

Then, of course, there was also the breakup of the USSR itself in the early 1990s. There was some bloodshed in Moldova and fierce fighting at times between Armenia and Azerbaijan, but it wasn't anything to do with a Russian attempt to cling on these territories.

I'm returning to this thread after a gap of about four weeks. There seems to be no disgreement at all about the start of Britain's relative economic decline, namely from the late 1870s onwards. Certainly, the government and parliament were by then well aware of growing competition from Germany - followed closely by the USA. Moreover, it was much exacerbated by the excpetionally severe depression of 1873-79 in much of Europe, which finally hit Britain in 1876.

However, there seems to be much less agreement as to when the real political decline began, though nobody has seriously suggested a date after 1916. (It took much longer, however, for the general public to become fully aware of what was going on). Nevertheless, by the early years of the 20th century, there was of course widespread awareness that Germany and its grotequely immature Kaiser were taking great delight in trying to overturn the British applecart ...

In adding to this thread again I suppose I am running the risk of talking to to myself - which is supposed to be unhealthy (or worse).

Some contributors have mentioned various setbacks in the history of the British Empire. However, setbacks and blunders are common enough in the history of empires. The main questions seem to me to be: (1) How quickly and effectively did the country "bounce back"? (2) When did the setbacks become endemic?

As for #1, the most spectacular setback was surely the loss of the thirteen American colonies, but Britain bounced back and the Empire expanded throughout the period c. 1800-1902.

#2 This question is harder to answer, but I'd again suggest looking at the 1930s - or, if one want to expand the period, c. 1916 onwards.