Well, the picture certainly isn't a simple one, Adrian II, I'd readily agree. But I'd beg to differ that we ever had more in common with Napoleon than his other opponents.

And though we had several friends to defeat the likes of Napoleon and Hitler, we were also at times "effectively alone" against them. And my main point being that without the British Empire, either or both Napoleon's or Hitler's regimes could and probably would have taken over the World, or a big chunk thereof. BTW, I take it you're joking somewhat about the Spanish and Italian's help in either of those situations! Pretty useless allies -when they weren't actually on the other side - where they weren't much use there either....

And as to the Russians and Germans: even the Russians had an effective agreement with Hitler to carve up Eastern Europe, and only entered the war a couple of years later when Hitler invaded them. And as to the Germans, well, the Prussians helped crucially at Waterloo, but then they ganged up all the other german states into one country and gave us Hitler, which sort of cancels things out.....

Oh and BTW, I was talking about the Dutch East India Company, which we inherited through the House of Orange in 1688, not the Dutch West Indies, and we made plenty of money thank you, but ploughed a lot of it into building those countries up too.

As to other Empires - well Sapi, all the Romans ever did was give us pizzas, central heating and orgies. I mean, what use is that? We Brits gave the World tea, er, from India......
Rule Britannia