History of the British Empire (in One Take)

Welcome to the British Empire. This video takes an epic tour through centuries of change, resistance and violence, meeting key figures who played important roles in this turbulent era.

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0:08 - Introduction
0:39 - Queen Elizabeth I & Francis Drake
1:17 - Atlantic slave trade
1:56 - Pocahontas
2:36 - Nanny of the Maroons
3:15 - Cornwallis vs. Washington (American Revolutionary War)
4:02 - Cornwallis vs. Tipu Sultan (Mysore, India)
4:22 - Cornwallis vs. Wolfe Tone (Ireland)
4:56 - Olaudah Equiano
5:32 - Woollarawarre Bennelong
6:12 - Queen Victoria
6:32 - Cecil Rhodes
6:46 - Gandhi in South Africa
7:24 - World War One
8:14 - Gandhi monologue

Thank you for watching 'History of the British Empire (in One Take)' by History Bombs.

CAST
Presenters: Chris Hobbs & Nelufar Hedayat
British Soldier/George Washington: Barnaby Jago
Captain/Earl Cornwallis: Guy Kelly
Queen Elizabeth I: Katy Schutte
Francis Drake: Tom Tokley
Pocahontas: Charlie Esquér
Nanny of the Maroons: Nataylia Roni
Tipu Sultan/WW1 Soldier: Sam Sharma
Wolfe Tonne: Louis Ellis
Olaudah Equiano/WW1 Soldier/Windrush arrival: Jacob Bukasa
Woollarawarre Bennelong: Tarik Frimpong
Queen Victoria: Amy Cooke-Hodgson
Cecil Rhodes: Tom Crowley
MK Gandhi: Ram Gupta

CREW
Script: Dylan Townley & Chris Hobbs
Historical Consultant: Shalina Patel
Director: Ellie Rogers
Assistant Director: Dylan Townley
Colour Grade: Jack Kibbey Newman
Steadicam Operator: Yiannis Manolopoulos
Focus Puller: Matt Farrant
Production & Casting: Chris Hobbs
Dresser: Eliandro Monteiro
Hair & Makeup: Seunghee Yoo
Unit Stills: Matthew Towers
BTS Video: Tristan James
Costumes: History in the Making & Angels
Location: Cutty Sark, Greenwich, London

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[Nucleotide]

Surprised Hong Kong wasn’t mentioned. Some say that’s when the British empire truly ended.

[cdanerz]

at the start of the video they said that England's rivals were Portugal and Spain.But at that time Portugal and England had great alliance and I understand that Portugal had started up
all the trade business and colonialism but England wasn't unfriendly, and France and Spain were more of a rivals.

[lordbonney]

Only critiques are towards the start.
1) Portugal and England weren’t rivals, they actively aided each other as they both had the common enemies of France and Spain.
2) British slaves weren’t sold to Spain. We sold them to other African kings and mainly Portugal (when they weren’t taken to the 13 Colonies).

[thepaleogamer]

I think a separate video for rebellions and other lesser known stuff would’ve been better than having it be 75% of the video

[cormacmcg]

I appreciate you all for mentioning the 1798 Rebellion, it never gets any attention outside Ireland itself yet its such an important event in our history.

[taxfraud]

Noticed several inaccuracies in this one, I'm not an expert so I may be wrong but:
1) In 1581 England and Portugal weren't rivals but actually their oldest allies.
2) There's very little evidence of raids carried out by the British into Africa to capture slaves like suggested in the song. In fact the majority of the slaves transported across the Atlantic were purchased from pre-existing African kingdoms
3) Nanny the Maroon most likely didn't exist and was a folk tale
4) The Kingdom of Mysore is described as a 'strong and diverse society' which is ironic because by the time of British invasion it was experiencing waves of civil strife and was in fact ruled by a Muslim elite class over a large Hindu population.
5) Ireland wasn't the first place the English colonised, it was Wales
6) The industrial revolution was attributed to wealth coming into Britain through the Atlantic slave trade which is inaccurate as industrialisation was mostly caused by population growth and urbanisation. And only began to 'revolutionise' society after the slave trade was abolished in 1829

[indeedentertainment]

Fun fact: This channel has now talked about the atriocities of the British Empire more than the atriocities of the Germans or the Soviets in WW2.

[sithben]

Seems more like a history of 'British Colonial Exploitation' than the British empire itself, but even then the format doesn't work for it.

[thebrutusmars]

So glad to see a new History Bombs In One Take, but damn was this one less fun than usual…

[drhdogdoom]

This isn't about the British empire

[dashiellcapps]

i wish they could have brought up the war of 1812 and the Zulu war, especially the last stand at roakes drift

[TheAussieHistorian]

i like how george washington has an american accent even though he was british

[infernochicken]

You know the video is going to be misleading when they say Portugal and England where rivals

[reiforsale]

Is this a video about the British empire or the British colonies? Cause I saw absolutely NO British soldiers mentioned during the ww1 part. They actually didn’t put one famous British person who did good on there either.

They didn’t mention the napoleonic wars or the war of 1812. Or British expeditionary forces in France or British soldiers along with Australian troops in the Ottoman Empire or Lawrence of Arabia which definitely could have fit into the video’s narrative. It’s clear the video’s intention is to claim that Britain was a horrible empire (which can be debated because the British empire DID do atrocities in Africa and caused a famine in India) without acknowledging actual British history or the good stuff it did. This is not the history of the British empire. This is the history of the British COLONIES.

[goncanada]

It is nice to see another in one take, however this one could have been done better. Atriocities seemed to be the videos main focus. There is more to the British Empire than just commiting atriocities.

[BLC]

This is less the history of the British empire and more a highlight on British atrocities and the victims of it. This video is anachronistic. Although i wont argue that these these things didn't happen, they are expressed in a dominating way to the point where British empire building gets completely overshadowed. This feels more like a political message conveyed trough atrocities that were inspected trough a modern-western lens, than it is history.

Yesterday the history channel OverSimplified also released a new video on the punic wars, which also highlights barbaric elements of the Roman empire which still often gets glorified by our modern times, without making their history just singularly about it. People are cruel, but we now live in a time where cruelty is no longer something we are okay with. And i think its important to educate people on the facts without making history solely about them, which in my opinion, this History Bombs video fails to do.

[Joe]

The video was entertaining, but had a blatant agenda.

Also interesting that you mentioned Olaudah Equiano, but nothing about Josiah Wedgewood, Thomas Clarkson, John Newton, Granville Sharp, not even William Wilberforce, who was perhaps the most important person in the abolitionist movement.

[uncrownedfire]

Quality video as usual but this one seemed to only focus on the harsh, sometimes obscure negatives and skip over many important events.

[jacobbaumgardner]

This was a great video on the atrocities and reforms of the British Empire, but a terrible one in relation to the overall history of said Empire.
History is more than just what’s politically relevant right now.

[damnthathurts]

The 1 take videos for WW1/WW2/CW really got me into history, I love it so much now. I can't imagine how much effort these 1 take videos take, but pls, continue