I said " what if the English had never colonised north america "
That means the USA wouldn't be speaking English ,there would be no "new york " or "birmingham " or new england etc (do you get the picture kazetnagorra ?).

New York would still be called New Amsterdam and New England would still be called New Netherland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Anglo-Dutch_War

I can't site chapter and verse, but it certainly seemed in the late 90s that most or at least very many people in Hong Kong would rather have stayed under British authority.

If that is true then the transition to Chinese rule was ill-advised.

Unfortunately for the people of hong kong at the time the 'New territories' were only leased to britain until 1997 and the remainder was deemed unsustainable as an entity.
and yes there were feelings of trepidation and betrayal on the part of it's residents even though britain managed to get some agreements from china regarding the political and economic future of hong kong; given the subsequent economic development of china why would they have wanted to change hong kong.

Unless your name is McGregor.

The highland clearances were carried out by SCOTTISH absentee landlords' duke of Argyll was probably the biggest culprit and furthermore was the 'unacceptable face of capitalism' rather than ethnic cleansing. would you like to start a thread about the near genocide of the south American indian by the conquistadors and spanish colonists and priests that followed them.

Ethnic cleansing is an aspect of the unacceptable face of capitalism, I agree, nor was it limited to capitalism as practiced by the British empire.

what though; just the british empire; not the :-spanish/french/german/russain/american empires just the british empire. Thats all brits are saying, not that the british empire was benign, but people who live in glass houses should'nt throw stones.

The nuclear subs were one of the big factors in the Falklands War, but Britain lost more ships than expected. And that may very well have been the last naval war in history, as big powers are probably done actually fighting each other directly. Knock on wood.

Mc- names are Irish, aren't they? Mac- names are Scottish.

Simpsons clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnsIxA75VTU

Scots are part of Great Britain.

Apparently Ewan McGregor is a Scot, so nvm

on the Mac v Mc question

http://www.scottishhistory.com/articles/misc/macvsmc.html

http://uk.reuters.com/video/2012/02/03/leftist-protesters-attack-british-banks?videoId=229573187

The Argentinains seem a lot tamer than the UK protesters that attacked banks...

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/605440-g20-protesters-break-into-rbs-building

I thunk they would probably be classified as scots/irish or irish/scots I could be wrong but have not come across any indigenous Irish with mc before their name could be scots who migrated to Ireland centuries ago; (plantations) lets not go there. Oh yeah and centuries before that loads of irish settled the west coast of scotland.