How did the island of England become a power(wayyyy back then, not now) and conquer larger lands when they had such limited land, food and supplies?
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They didn’t have limited land, food or supplies. They grew tons of food once tubers were introduced from the Americas, had lots of wood to build ships, lots of coal and iron ore, lots of fish, and lots of people for labour.
Technology advancement compared to the rest of Europe- the start of the Industrial Revolution.
You are incorrect in some ways. The important thing is not how large the land is but how much of land there is for growing food. Great Britain has a lot of arable land and relatively good climate for agriculture. And being an island is an advantage, they didn’t have to spend a lot of resources defending their lands meaning they could focus on just one thing – their navy.
The problem of land powers is that they are constantly defending their borders and their most obvious expansion is to send troops across their borders to the next door country. They have less need for exploration in a sense.
Their form of government likely also had something to do with it. The UK had moved towards a democracy/civil administration before many other powers. Many other countries retained their monarchy/feudal structures. Because of this, the UK also relied more on trade and exploration rather than conquest/subjugation.
And of course, by the early 1800s, the UK was one of the first countries to enter the Industrial Age meaning they had a rather huge advantage in production.
They were a mid-ranking European state for centuries, able to punch above their weight because they were a unitary kingdom with a strong tax system (a legacy of the Danish invasions) and a forum for the elites in parliament. But not a match for France or Castile or the Empire. Then they went Protestant, had a Civil War and were in fear of the Catholic Counter-Reformation. So they invested continually in the navy as the first line, captured lucrative trades and outposts, which gave them the cash flow to sustain war (capturing more trade and outposts and valuable places like Bengal and the West Indian sugar islands), which gave them lots more cash which was invested in improving farming and in industry, which eventually led to the breakthrough into steam power, which gave them a huge technological edge for a century or more (really, up to 1945).
For a long while they were getting slapped around and conquered by every guy who could make a boat. At some point they decided to boatmaxx instead. With boatmaxxing you can go out into the world and attack far away targets who cannot attack back. This means your campaign is a lot cheaper than a land campaign. It also means that you don’t need much land to actually make profit out of your conquest because all you really need to protect are ports and trade routes. Boatmaxxing made them tons of money all the while all the other boatmaxxers crumbled under the weight of their acquisitions.
A powerful-ass navy.
There’s a reason why island nations are good at conquering. Just look at the Japanese. It’s the nations with powerful navies that control the seas, and therefore have more reach over foreign lands.
Being an island Britain invested in its navy early on. As global trade started to arrive this navy allowed the UK to take full advantage of this which brought a lot of money in.
As world populations grew wood became expensive which pushed every prices up. The UK also had a lot of accessible coal which could be used for energy and kept energy prices down.
Having lots of money and cheap energy in the evening led to the industrial revolution which massively increased the ability to make ships and weapons, as well as allowing much more intensive farming.
Of course the UK wasn’t the only European country to have a large empire, Spain controlled huge parts of North, Central and South America for hundreds of years.
The British Isles were insanely resource rich(fish, iron, trees, etc), they dealt with less constant conflict because they were an island nation, and they were never fully romanized, so the colapse of the WRO didn’t hit them as hard as it did others.
Furthermore, as an island nation it was natural for them to have fairly advanced ship-building for both trade and defense, and a robust naval tradition. As a matter of fact, the “British Empire” as we think about it today came about almost as an accident of them trading far and wide during the age of sail. While late to the colonization game, their existing naval infrastructure, including far-flung trading ports and the chartered company system allowed them to expand rapidly to a place where *literally*, “The sun never sets on the British Empire”…
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