In the mid-19th century, particularly from the 1850s-1870s, England was not only at the peak of her prosperity, but was a power of the sort the rest of the world could only imitate.
Her factories pumped out goods sold for immense profits around the world, both in the empire and without, and the innovation behind them had only America as a near rival. Her navies ruled the seven seas with nary a challenger in sight, blasting to bits those like the Chinese who tried to resist.1 Her landed society and all supported by it — from the farm laborers to lords, farmers to village tradesmen — was more prosperous than it ever had been or would be.2 She was the leading merchant marine, the leading railroad builder, and the leading empire, and she set the standard lesser mortals of nations could merely imitate.
Then came the decline.
Much like the slowly decaying columns that grace the spines of Gibbon’s famous “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the decline was neither sudden nor all at once, but did roll on near-inexorably over the following decades.
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