History
Upon the Act of Union in 1707, the armed forces of England and Scotland were merged into the armed forces of the Kingdom of Great Britain. By 1815, with the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo Britain had risen to become the world's dominant superpower, and the British Empire subsequently presided over a period of relative peace, known as Pax Britannica, until the outbreak of World War One in 1914. Between 1707 and 1914, British forces played a prominent role in notable conflicts including the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars and the Crimean War.
The current structure of defence management in Britain was set in place in 1964 when the modern day Ministry of Defence (MoD) was created (an earlier form had existed since 1940). The MoD assumed the roles of the Admiralty, the War Office and the Air Ministry.
Read more about this topic: British Armed Forces
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“Psychology keeps trying to vindicate human nature. History keeps undermining the effort.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)