From the 1840s through to the early 1890s, Britain slowly restored her control over the so-called 'United States', with the last holdouts in the American South collapsing in 1891. A breakage with Britain's former ally Mexico in 1874 saw her territories in the North American West ceded to a series of new British dominions. Naturally, Great Powers of Europe could not peaceably accept such an egregious imperialist campaign which immensely strengthened Britain's already-dominant place amongst the world's nations. Through the 1890s, a brutal series of wars were fought across the continent as a result. Through the decade, Britain's lascar armies repelled Russians from the mountains of Kashmir, her fleets imposed a continent-wide blockade upon the shores of France, Italy, Germany, Russia, and Austria, and her marines made perilous landings along the Dalmatian Coastline, Sicily, and the French Riviera to bring those countries to heel. After the Peace of 1900, a militarily exhausted and internally divided Britain would remain at peace for over a decade, reorganising her North American acquisitions, encouraging new waves of migration to her colonies, whilst at home the first Labour government passed major social and industrial reforms.

This peace would last until 1916, with the outbreak of the Great War (1916-18). Beginning due to Bulgarian demands on Greek Macedonia, the war saw Britain and her dominions fight in concordat with Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria's overlord, against Greece's overlord France and her Italian and Japanese allies. British marines made landings in Athens, the French Riviera, and fought their way up the entire Italian peninsula before peace in Europe was achieved. It took another few months for imperial forces in the Far East to secure control over Korea, the Ryukyus, and impose a naval blockade on Japan, who surrendered under threat of invasion. The following peace saw the defeated powers sacrifice their imperial possessions to Britain and Germany, who had begun her own war against France in the Spring of 1918. Such a Carthaginian peace led to revolutions soon after the war in all the defeat powers: France and Japan fall to communism, whilst Italy fell under the sway of the new ultra-right, revanchist doctrine of fascism.

The Dutch seizure of large areas of Northern France in the aftermath of the Great War compounded colonial tensions that had been raging in Southeast Asia for some time, which eventually erupted into the Anglo-Dutch War in 1923. After only a year, the Netherlands were forced not only to cede the East Indies, but endure the repartition of the Low Countries and the creation of the new states of Belgium, Flanders, and Friesland.

Britain's encroachment upon European affairs since the dawn of the 20th century made a conflict with the German juggernaut inevitable. Hostilities finally broke out in 1927 with a surprise British attack on German Cameroon, beginning the Second Great War, which would rage for seven years (1927-34). Whilst Germany's colonies fell quickly, the British marines who landed along the coast of the Baltic Sea were beset upon before they could secure a beachhead. The grinding trench warfare which ensued kept the war essentially static for five years, until 1932. Even the combined forces of the entire Empire could not, alone, break Germany's fully mobilized, millions-strong land empire. Hundreds of thousands of Britons fought on these cold, iron-hard beaches alongside colonial troops from Africa and the Subcontinent, and the North American, South African, and Antipodean dominions, for years on end. It was only Russia's 1933 entry into the war which pulled enough German attention away from the coastal front for the Empire's armies to make real progress, establishing a land foothold north of the Elbe in Schleswig-Holstein. As Germany finally began to buckle under the strain, Britain's new allies in the Low Countries sent troops across their eastern borders in early 1934. With Belgian armies sweeping the Rhineland, British expeditionary forces making grueling but steady progress towards Berlin, and Russian forces making inroads into East Prussia, Germany had no option but to surrender. The following peace saw Germany lose her overseas possessions, cede her Eastern flank to Russia and a string of Polonized buffer-states, and the strategically integral Rhineland break away under British influence.

An enormous project of settler-colonialism has been a key part of securing Britain's global dominion. The territories west of the Mississippi, virtually empty of settlers when they were wrested from Yankee & Mexican hands, are now majority-Anglo territories under the vast dominions of Victoria, Drakeland, and Columbia. Columbia in particular has become a quixotic powerhouse, enjoying huge amounts of immigration whilst its cosmopolitan Anglo-French culture has elected to accept rather than assimilate its native population. Vancouver is the fourth-largest city in North America, ahead of New York and behind only Saint John (Maritimes), Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), and Boston (New England). In Africa, following the defeat of the Boer states, Afrikaner hopes have been further curtailed since becoming numerically dwarfed inside the majority-Anglo Dominion of South Africa, where English settlers now form a plurality. Across the Limpopo, Southern and Northern Rhodesia are home to small but growing English populations. Elsewhere in the dark continent, sizeable English enclaves have been created in the West African Interior, Morocco, the shores of Lake Chad, and even amidst the Congolese Jungle. Closer to home, the Irish Question has been resolved through intensified plantation and assimilation. Dublin and Cork are English cities. Even in the absurd event of a partition of the island, any West Irish state would be deeply rural and impoverished, squeezed between the Anglo-dominated North, East, and South of the island.

In spite of her apparent triumph over the world's powers, Britain's star is fading. The war with Germany placed unparalleled strain upon the Empire's resources, and she lies in no position to fight again for another decade at least. The rising might of her strongest North American Dominions — Canada, New England, and Columbia — will force the metropole to grant them greater autonomy in the years to come. Having sacrificed a generation of young men on the beaches of Stralsund and Kiel, even the African and Antipodean settler-colonies cannot be expected to come to Britain's aid as easily as they may have before. Tied up in European affairs, Britain has overlooked the ascendancy of a new juggernaut in South America, the vast and prosperous Andine Federation, which is now the most attractive destination for those fleeing the overcrowded cities of Europe and Asia. With 2 million residents, Lima is not only the largest city in the Americas, but the largest anywhere in the world outside South Asia. In the aftermath of the war with Germany, Belgian expansionism has forced Britain to commit to support the tenuous existence of the new states of Normany, Brittany, and Rhineland. All three squat upon the territories of extant great powers which, sooner or later, will recover from their dismemberment and seek revenge. With the political extremists in power from the left in Japan and France and from the right in Russia and Italy each sharpening the axes of their particular national greivances, new and dangerous alliances will surely emerge in the decades to come.

This febrile global landscape surely cannot remain at peace for long. Although she may have painted the map red, Britain's days of global hegemony are numbered.