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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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.
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