Editing Blog/2026-03-03/As The Magic Leaves (section)

== Britain Eminent ==

Tolkien was born in the Orange Free State, and his childhood covered Britain as the one prime power, reabsorbing the land of his birth in the [[wikipedia:Second Boer War|Second Boer War]]. This empire had a fourth of the world's land, fourth of the world's people, and had absolute and [[wikipedia:Naval Defence Act 1889|complete naval supremacy]]. Britain's possessions included India Undivided, Canada, Australia and the sea lanes between. Her capital centered global financial trade, her currency powered it, and she was an unstoppable industrial power.

Admittedly, the British elite were fairly educated about the empires of the past, and the possibility of fading struck them neither as distant nor as unlikely. Britain was always a rightfully anxious<ref name=anxious/> empire, so that even a poem composed for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee expresses this foreknowledge of the sun setting on the empire.
{{Poem quote
 |Far-called, our navies melt away;
  On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
  Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
 |sign=[[wikipedia:Rudyard Kipling|Kipling]]
 |source=''[[wikipedia:Recessional (poem)|Recessional]]''
}}

But Tolkien's childhood and teenage years would nonetheless see Britain still rising, just not as fast as others. The launch of [[wikipedia:HMS Dreadnought (1906)|HMS Dreadnought]] would have perhaps buoyed the hopes of those who "drunk with sight of power, loosed wild tongues" but it was becoming clear by now that German and American industrial ambitions would outstrip the UK in time. The empire could still muster great industrial power and technological modernity but the end was on the horizon.