Have You Always Wondered?

How European Empires fell.

Europe. Europe is a continent that left a mark on the world. Spreading it's influence, language, culture, and religion, to everywhere they conquered. Europe in 1921, controlled 40% of the entire world, almost half of that 40% was from the British Empire. But what went wrong? The British Empire was the largest empire in history but absolutely collapsed after World War II, and would officially end in 1991, after the British Empire, or what's left of it, lost Hong Kong to Communist China. What is the main reason European Empires fell? The World Wars. The first World War, despite mainly taking place in Europe was absolutely heavy for the countries who participated. But the victors of World War I didn't lose their empire, as a matter a fact the victors expanded their empire, obviously examples is the British Empire and the French Colonial Empire. But World War II really hit the mark for the empires. At first many natives under European control was once again forced to participate in a European war. But when Imperial Japan invaded Southeast Asia from Britain, France, and the Netherlands. The Natives knew that the Europeans were losing their grip. As Japan easily steamrolled through their colonies giving Asians and Africans confidence to fight back against their European masters. Most countries under European control didn't really fight, their colonizers allowed them to be independent. Why because the United Nations. The UN forced every member of the UN to forcibly and recognize their colonies as independent nations, to prevent another World War. Britain, seeing how brutal World War II was, just went with the flow and allowed their colonies to gain independence. France, wasn't the same as Britain. France wanted to keep it's empire and refused for their colonies to gain independence, even fighting natives in Indochina, Algeria, and Tunisia. But eventually France gave up and let it's colonial empire disappear from Earth, for the sake to prevent another World War. So that's the main reason why large empires such as the UK's empire fell so quickly.