The British, Teribus, were busily engaged in empire-building in, for example, France during the 100 Years War, and they failed only due to the fortuitous arrival of Joan of Arc in 1429. If not for her brief campaigns which utterly reversed the British fortunes, what we now know as the nation of France would have gone through the same sort of lengthy occupation by the British Empire as Ireland endured. The British also created the world's biggest and most successful overseas empire all over the place....Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, North America, various Pacific islands, India....and they ran it very well, as empires go. I'd say it was the most successful empire since Rome.

I cannot fathom how you can go about leaving Great Britain off my list of those who "set out aggressively to establish empires". Really can't. Did they just accidentally fall into the great good fortune of acquiring the world's biggest empire...or did the suffering inhabitants of those scattered lands ask the British to come in and take over? ;-)

But I know you like to get into the minutiae and nitpick the details, and so do I. Isn't it a joy to have something like that to disagree about again? ;-)

I await your response with much anticipation, I assure you, but do not assume that my characterizing Great Britain as being among the nations who "set out aggressively to establish empires" is in some way a blanket condemnation of the British nation or its character. It is not. Most (if not all) great nations have engaged in empire-building at some time in their history, and it is usually thought to be a glorious and entirely noble enterprise by those doing it...while not so much liked by those receiving the imperial attention. That is strictly a matter of individual perspective. Everyone feels instinctively that they are doing "the right thing" when it comes to such disputes.

And that is also true of the verbal debates on this forum.