Colonial Loss Quotes

We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep.

Cochinchina [Vietnam] is burning, the French and the British are being destroyed there and we are forced to get out of Southeast Asia.

We are bound to lose Ireland in consequence of years of cruelty, stupidity and misgovernment and I would rather lose her as a friend than as a foe.

England must either lose her colonies or destroy them in the effort to hold them, and in either event there would be the same loss of trade, the same decay in manufactures, and the same destruction of national credit.

For Carolina once ruined and destroyed, the extermination of her [England's] colonial dependencies will follow.

Postcolonial critics are, I suspect, wrong when they argue that the mass of British people still mourn the loss of empire. But Britain's politicians - and its Foreign Office - have found it hard to adjust to the loss, not so much of onetime colonies as of the global clout the colonies once afforded.

It was on this day that the Bahamas declared independence. Before that they were a British colony. The British Empire lost Canada and the Bahamas, to name just a couple. Britain's been dumped more times than Taylor Swift. But did they go writing whining songs about it? No.

England totally disarmed and an easy prey to hostile forces! Can you think of anything more likely to excite cupidity and hostile intention? We should sink to the level of a fifth rate Power, our Colonies would be stripped from us, our commerce would decline, famine and unemployment would stalk the land... I have yet to learn that the cause of peace can be served by rendering our country impotent.