cactus,
Quote:
orry, but your facts are way off: The British presence in India was held with around 190,000 regular troops, 40,000 Class A state forces, 60,000 Class B state forces, 40,000 Class C state forces, around 80,000 members in various police forces. Additionally there was an intricate IIB and predecessor intelligence organizations.
Further, the British presence was secured by a strategic relay of outposts - running from Aden to Singapore - monitoring all southern approaches to India; the north-western approach was secured by keeping the Afghan tribes in constant turmoil, and by constant contest for influence (sometimes through naked aggression) in Kabul and Tehran; the north-eastern approach was secured by a Royal Navy that could blow Peiking to bloody smitherens (as it had habitually demonstrated in conflicts of much lesser importance to Britain than security of India).
Numerous factors went into unravelling the British Empire - modern political nationalism in India being one of them - but no one factor can be attributed as the "ONLY" tipping point. It is gross simplification; ultimately leading to false suppositions for other arguments.
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to the question of numbers- what adux said, how many white imperial troops (and not sepoys, for instance).
also, many of the troops were positioned for imperial defense against the russians, as opposed to internal security.
certainly a number of factors led to the downfall of the empire, trade, technology, democracy, etc etc. however, THE biggest reason is simply nationalism.
regarding your deliberate uncertainty,
i don't think so. the US and china, for example, both use deliberate uncertainty when it comes to responses regarding the taiwan strait. this is a strategy many other nations use, so this isn't a china-specific problem IMO.