what are the reasons why england conquered many countries?

The main reason was that they were tired of suffering from a stiff upper lips brought on by the damp climate. The strategy was to plant as many British flags they could every time a ship from their large Navy made landfall.

Stagnant economy + cultural arrogance, later exacerbated by the loss of the colonies, maybe. And the desire to keep France from doing it first.

I have a couple of things to do, but then i'll come back and try to give you the simplest answer i am able to provide. I will make this obsrevation, though. I suspect this is a high school history assignment. I suspect that because the question is simple-minded and naïve--the type of overly simplistic and misleading question high school history teachers ask because they aren't really teaching history, they're just peddling formulaic, rote "history" which doesn't deserve the name of history. I'll be back later.

Agreed. Lazy teacher, and/or lazy or incoherent student.

The reasons "why" "England" "conquered" many "countries"...

Unclear what is being asked...

Why - why did they want to do it, why did they do it, how were they able to do it, how did they do it?

England... does he mean Britain? Or not?

Conquered... defeated in battle? Occupied? Colonised?

Countries... were they actually countries before they were "conquered"?

Education is progressive. In high school you learn what the average high schooler can digest (teach to the middle). In undergrad, you learn what average undergrads can digest. In grad school, you learn why everything you learned previously is flawed. That's just the way it goes. You don't teach partial differential equations before you teach basic algebra and trig. If this is a high school assignment, it looks pretty age-appropriate to me. I don't see the need for sneering condescension in response to this honest question.

Good points all, but i'm going to have a little fun with this.

First, the question implies that England set out to conquer "different countries," and that is simply not true. This is why i say the question is naïve and simplistic. I suspect that your teacher expects you to puke up whatever line of BS s/he has been "teaching," but that you have not been paying attention and now you come here in a panic looking for answers.

The simplest answer is venture capitalism. Without going into details, as a result of the Roman empire's policy of federation of "barbarian" tribes, a custom grew up that one would give one third of one's plunder to one's feudal lord (i won't go into a detailed explanation of that). So, if i'm the Duke of Earl, and i send you to France to fight for the King, you are to give me one third of all the plunder you take. When well managed, that was considerable. (However, when the French were acting intelligently, a rather rare circumstance, the English would get little or nothing after marching across France and reaching the coast hungry, shoeless and dropping from disease) This worked all down the line. The captain of a company or men at arms and archers got one third of whatever plunder those boys took. He, in his turn, handed over one third of his take to his liege lord. He would then hand over one third of his profits to the king. Everybody wins (except the French, who paid enormously for stupidity and hubris).

So, if i'm the Duke or Earl, and i send Bsie out with a company of my men at arms and archers, they will try to get all the plunder they can, and will give Bsie one third of what they take. Suppose they get 27000 pieces of gold. They will then give 9000 gold pieces to Bsie. Bsie then gives me 3000 gold pieces, and i give 1000 gold pieces to the King. That's the ideal, at any rate, and sometimes it worked, and sometimes nearly everybody was killed or maimed and the few survivors staggered into Bordeaux or Calais, just glad to get a hot meal and wait for the next ship back to England.

But this lead to a tradition of what can reasonably be called venture capitalism. Leaving aside the crusades, which everyone screwed up, the first attempt at overseas exploration and trade was by Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal. His efforts were largely administrative--finding capital to underwrite the voyages, encouraging exploration and trade, and even putting his own money into the effort. He was fairly rich for reasons i won't go into here. From his efforts, the Portuguese would "conquer" islands in the Atlantic off the coast of Africa, which proved very useful to them long after Henry had died. Henry attempted to muscle his way into the Muslim slave trade on the west coast of Africa, and got his military ass handed back to him. That proved to be a good thing, as it lead the Portuguese to continue down the coast of Africa. Almost 30 years after Henry died, Dias reached the south coast of Africa, at what he called (in Portuguese), the Cape of Storms, we now call it the Cape of Good Hope. That was in 1588. In 1598, Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in India, where he failed to impress the local potentate. He started with four ships and 170 men. Half the men were lost in storms at sea or died of scurvy, and he lost two ships. However, When he returned in 1599, he got a hero's welcome, and he made King Manuel rich. The spices they brought back proved to be worth 60 times the entire cost of the expedition, even after the King paid everyone their contractual wages (he got a break on that since only half of them survived).

The Portuguese has been making good money on gold dust, irvory and the slave trade in West Africa even before da Gama's voyage, which may explain why Queen Isabella of Castille decided to "underwrite" Columbus. Don't believe all that old BS about Isabella hocking the crown jewels. She put the arm on a few rich nobles to pay for the crews and supplies, and she simply seized three ships from a merchant in Seville for Columbus to sail in. They were not very good ships, but seaman in the age of sail were pretty good at keeping their crappy ships afloat, and repairing them when they hit land. The story of Columbus is sordid and not germane here. Suffice it to say that Spain subsequently erected the larges empire in the world since the Romans. Their method was an expansion on the one third principle of classic European, feudal venture capitalism. They divided the plunder into five parts. One fifth went to the church, and you can bet there was a priest or friar in every expedition to keep an eye on the loot and the church's share--i mean, to see to the spiritual welfare of the conquistaores and to convert the noble savages. Yeah, that's it, they were just there doing god's work. One fifth would go to the Crown, and a royal account went along on every expedition which had gotten royal approval. The leader of the expedition got one fifth, his offices got one fifth, and the majority, the soldiers and sailors, split the remaining fifth. The difference in the fortunes of Cortés and Pixarro is instructive. Cortés did not get approval up front, and was eventually impoverished by royal accountants and lawyers. Pizarro, despite being a bastard. illiterate and a former swineherd, either got good advice or naturally had a good head on his shoulders. He had all his ducks in a row, and took a friar and a royal accountant with him. Of course, he grew so rich that he attracted jealous rivals, and being the bastard son of an unimportant family, he had no powerful friends at his side when his palace in Lima was stormed, and he was murdered. Nevertheless, the Spaniards managed through that bastard child of feudalism, venture capitalism, to create a vast empire that spanned the globe and to import so much silver and gold that they ruined their own economy and to a lesser extent, the economies of the other European nations. (They were unable to say "runaway inflation.")

During most of the 15th century, when Henry the Navigator and the Portuguese were out looking for gold, ivory and slaves,the English were screwing around in France and losing the Hundred Years War. Then they went home and fought a series of civil wars called the Wars of the Roses. While the Bartolomeu Dias was sailing down the west coast of Africa, looking for the spot to turn the corner, Henry Tudor, now King Henry VII of England, was putting down the last gasp of the failed house of York, and establishing one of the most interesting dynasties in English history. The Dutch weren't doing much of anything unusual, just fishing the North Sea to feed Europe's Catholics during Lent, and thereby becoming some of the greatest sailors in Europe. (The North Sea ain't no Disney World--in fact, it has some of the worst storms and the roughest waters in the world--it made the English and the Dutch great sailors, though.)

Ninety years after da Gama landed in India, in 1588, The Spanish sent a great fleet, called the Armada, to accoplish destruction of the Dutch (who had rebelled against the Spanish several years earlier--we won't bg into why the Netherlands belonged to Spain); and to invade England. The Spanish were fairly well-equipped, and had the largest navy in the world at the time, with lots of experienced officers and crew and marines, and the expedition was well-organized and well supplied. The Dutch were basically an organized crime syndicate afloat, and had been gleefully making monkeys of the Spanish for a generation by then, and constantly raided the coast of the Netherlands for fun and profit--oh, and to win their independence . . . yeah, that was it, they were freedom fighters. The English were largely a pack of well-heeled pirates who had been raiding Spanish trade for a generation.

The Spanish should have won. They had everything going for them, while the English had no fleet organization and were so poorly organized that some of their sailors actually starved to death before they finally saw the Armada off. What happened to the Spanish was a mixture of King Philip II attepting to micromanage the enterprise in an age of slow and unreliable communications, and the arrogance of the Duke of Parma. The Duke of Medina-Sedonia, who commanded the Armada was supposed to sail past England and pick up Parma's army, thought to be about 30,000 men. Parma had only about 16,000 fit for service, but they were hard bastards, and would have made mincemeat of the English. Elizabeth had about 4000 troops, of dubious quality, but many were veterans of the wars between the Spanish and the Dutch. But Parma refused to cooperate. When the Armada sailed past England, the English nipped at their heels, but were unwilling to close with the Spanish, which was a good thing, because the Spanish would have overwhelmed them. After screwing around way too long, Medina-Sidonia agreed to sail to a port called Gravelines to pick up Parma's army, and the English, for all that they were poorly organized and had no coherent command, were still good enough sailors to see their advantage. They caught the Spanish on a lee shore, closed to within a hundred yards and blasted the sh*t out of them with cannon fire, something for which the Spanish were not prepared. Medina-Sidonia finally decided to sail away to save as much of his fleet as he could. Don't believe all that old BS they trot out about the Armada and Hearts of Oak--they got lucky in a situation in which they should have been doomed.

Elizabeth died in 1603 and King James (you know, the bible guy?) could not shake the dust of Scotland off his boots fast enough. It was King James I who initiated English venture capitalism of the colonial type. Jamestown was founded in 1607, even though the English had been calling North America "Virginia" (in honor of Elizabeth, a putative virgin) for two generations, and doing f*ck-all about it. Although the London Company which established Jamestown went bankrupt, the pattern was set. The Massachusetts Bay company, the Muscoy Company, The Hudson's Bay Company--these are all examples of venture capitalism in action in England. Some failed, and some succeeded. Often, the English were not actually dealing with other countries--not in the 19th century sense of nation states. What usually happened is that English merchants got established somewhere, cried and whined to the Crown, and the Royal Navy or redcoats were sent to haul their chestnutes out of the fire. Their one great colonizing venture, North America, fell apart because the Crown and the government were lousy at managing their people and their resources--hence the American revolution. When merchants, who already owned about half of Parliament, set up their trade routes, and the navy and the army were dispatched to rescue the merchants, often in some phony-baloney crisis, England more or less stumbled into empire.

So the simple answer is, it was venture capitalism.

I'm sure that this has been largely incomprehensible for you, and as it doesn't puke up whatever false historical pap your teacher has been feeding you, i suspect it will have been no help at all to you.

I don't see the need to call the criticism that people come here expecting us to do their home work for them, when they could do it themselves if they had paid attention in class "sneering condescension." The question as stated clearly looks for an answer which the teacher has expected them to absorb in class, because the question is certainly nonsensical from an historical point of view--see Contrex's objections. This site sometimes provides people answers, but it is largely a discussion board, and it is not a site for doing home work for high school students.

An excellent summary by Setanta.

Thank you for the kind remark. Everything i wrote, despite the sarcasm, is, or should be, comprehensible to a high school student. They need coherent explanations; they don't need to be fed jejune historical myths.

It is sneering condescension to label the question and/or the request for input as "simple-minded and naïve." This is (ostensibly) a high school student faced with high school-level curriculum, and you are belittling him/her by proxy.

I don't deny that your summation of the causes for British colonialism is acute and to the point; I only point out that it is all but completely useless to the OP. You're trying to teach differential calculus to someone in first-year algebra.

This is analogous to the Input Hypothesis of Krashen's Second Language Acquisition Theory. You give the learner input that is one step above his/her current level, not 10 steps above it. Just like you intuitively speak slowly in short, simple phrases to toddlers. The point is to nurture them along in the learning process, not to browbeat them with your advanced understanding. I hope you are not a professional educator. If you are, I feel sorry for your students. Every teacher has to learn how to simplify the material to fit their students' levels. There is nothing "simple-minded and naïve" about it. It's just the learning process that any good educator learns to utilize to the students' best advantage, rather to the advantage of their own egos.

You need to lose the phony righteous indignation. I was belittling the teacher who gave this assignment, not the student. Once again, everything i posted is, or ought to be, comprehensible to a high school student. I first heard of Prince Henry the Navigator in high school. I heard about the Spanish Armada in grammar school--it was not, of course, until high school that i got past the historical myths. I don't really think you are qualified to judge what is or is not over the heads of high school students in the realm of history.

If you understood basic pedagodical principles, including the Input Hypothesis, you would know that engaging each student at his or her current level of understanding is more effective than throwing a blanket over the whole class and indiscriminately demanding that everyone perform at the same level.

I suspect that the teacher of this particular class is more aware of his/her students' levels and needs than you are. Is this particular student from an inner-city, under-priveledged educational environment or from an upper-middle-class private institution or from a rural farming area where McCarthyism and distrust of intellectuals still rules the day?

What do you actually know about the person who asked the question or the teacher who posed it? Nada. It seems to me that you're more interested in asserting your intellecutal superiority over a high school student than you are in actually helping him/her advance to the next level.

Given the choice of learning a foreign language or hitting someone, we took the easy option.

If you understood the public school system and the politics behind it, you wouldn't be babbling about graduate level concepts of education. No, i don't know anything about this student or the teacher. But i do know that the very terms of the question cannot be for any level higher than high school world history--that certainly is not a university level question. If the author were to come here and explain these things in detail, then we all would know wouldn't we? Do you really expect that a high school teacher has time to individually assess the level of comprehension of history of 30 or 40 students, and then teach to the strengths and weaknesses of each one of them? You won't see that in university level introductory history courses. Do you have any more of whatever it is you're smokin'?

I'd be interested in knowing what you allege that "the next level" is in high school history. It seems to me that you are more interested in asserting your superior knowledge of pedagogical theory than in providing this student with a useful answer. I actually did provide a useful summary. Your first post in this thread was vague and incoherent, it certainly would be no help to a high school student studying world or European history.

Perhaps you can square this statement with your subsequent rant about assessing each student and meeting their needs.

If the OP had typed the exact text of his/her post into Google, he/she would have found an enormous quantity of material.

I don't make a syllabus with predetermined content for a class until after I've met the students and made an informal assessment of their levels. Then I make lesson plans designed to teach to the middle, and then I give more fine-tuned input to individuals as I interact with them individually. This could be during Q&A, in response to questions during lecture, or during individual, pair or group work, while I'm monitoring and acting as a resource.

What I don't do is belittle and make harsh judgements about other teachers' lesson contents without knowing something about their students. Do you know what grade the OP is in, or whether the OP is a special needs student? Whether the class is an advanced one, a standard one or a remedial one? No? Then on what grounds can you defend labelling it as "simple-minded and naïve"? Odds are that it's probably age- and level-appropriate by local standards.

By the way, I do realize that I'm being harsh on you, but over the years I've become very protective of students in general and react strongly when I think they're being demotivated, intentionally or not.

Great summary from Set - and agree with the 'venture capitalism' thesis completely. There is one contributing factor that he left out that I find interesting - and that is the Venetian monopoly on the European spice trade - and then the Ottomans closing the land routes in 1453 after the fall of the Byzantine empire were both motivating factors for golden age of European exploration which, as Set says, was driven by profit. A sea route that bypassed the Venetian influence (and profit taking) in the Mediterranean was an early example of 'disintermediation'.