What British weapon represents Britain

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We start getting into the sticky wicket of English and British which is a nest of vipers.
Since it's British then the longbow has to be declined.
HMS Dreadnought is perhaps the leader. Represents industry, power and navy in one swoop although the career of Dreadnought is below par.

An old left winger called Tony Benn once said that Concorde should be in a museum not only as an aircraft but representative of when UK made something.
 
Yeah...could get messy trying to differentiate "English" vs "British", although there certainly were Welsh archers at Agincourt and, frankly, I'd be amazed if there weren't a few Irish and Scots thrown in. After all, each of the nations likes a good brawl every once in a while.
 
To the great unwashed and undereducated masses I still assert it would be the Spitfire. And even then some would think we were talking about a dragon or something. Agincourt is to little known nowadays to factor. Plus if I read the question correctly it was what weapon the rest of the world thinks of as representative of Britain. So you UK folks don't get to vote!
 
Until the introduction of passports people were what they said they were, only the wealthy were important. During the Napoleonic wars there were Irish regiments on both sides. If an army was paying some chose to fight in it whether they believed in its cause or not.

I always thought that the longbow was replaced by the cross bow because it was more sophisticated and damaging in battle. I was surprised to read that it was the training required to fire a longbow that was the problem. It took years to train to fire a longbow and a longbowmans skeleton shows deformities caused by doing it. Never shown on historical drama they must have been a group of strange looking critters, with some muscles massively over developed. A modern bow has a draw force of about 60ib wheras bows recovered from the Mary Rose have draw weights up to 180ib, firing one 10 times a minute takes huge strength.
 
Having worked in France they are well aware of the English longbow, however they are more aware of when they won against it. Paris has a gare de Austerlitz while London has a Waterloo station for this reason. King Richard 1st (the lionheart) is a hero in British culture, however he is also a hero in French culture and many French are unaware he had any English title, in France he is the Duke of Normandy Richard coeur de lion. In this I must say the French have a point because the English language did not exist at the time.
 
I probably should have clarified, outside Europe. A small informal sample just conducted amongst folks here, most college educated, associated the Long Bow with Robin Hood mostly! And while several knew of Agincourt none associated it in this context. However same sample group identified the Spitfire as both British and a weapon! When asked about the British navy most thought of sailing ships.
 
Robert Porter said:
amongst folks here, most college educated, associated the Long Bow with Robin Hood mostly! .
Click to expand...

The legend of Robin Hood like all legends had some basis. In the Robin Hood stories the evil Sheriff is collecting taxes for the king, the King being Richard 1st (lionheart) who was on the Crusades unaware how much his evil brother was taxing the nation.

It made a good story but is 99% BS. In Richards 10 year reign as king he spent 6 months in England, he spent more time in Hollywood movies.
 
The English language did exist in 1199 although our Norman conquerors thought they were French and spoke French.
The first king that was said to speak English as a first language was Henry V in 1413. Robin Hood was either based on someone or fictional but it's odd that an English hero is basically Batman.
I do think the Spitfire is probably the most known. SMLE and HMS Dreadnought is for us...Or P14 in my case.
 
The Basket said:
An old left winger called Tony Benn once said that Concorde should be in a museum not only as an aircraft but representative of when UK made something.
Click to expand...

And true to Mr Benn's word, they all are now! Except the ones the French buggered.

Nothing says Great Britain like a road in rural Southland, New Zealand - about as far from the heart of the Empire as you can get, called Rule Road, as in 'Empire Rule'.
 
Road in New Zealand. Not calle or strasse or rue or weg or doroga...Road. So that actually speaks volumes and probably the most obvious mark today of British colonial rule.
In Liverpool there were roads named after local bigwigs from the glory days of the port. It was found out that some of the names were slave traders and so they changed them. Unfortunately, one of them was called Penny Lane and later became a Beatles song. They didn't change this road. Political correctness V tourism.
 
Well known Bristolians 'Massive Attack' would not play the Bristol Colston Hall because it was funded by a family who had earlier made their money in the slave trade, but then just about everything in Bristol is founded on similar money. You have to draw a line somewhere.

The abolition of slavery in 1833 (not the abolition of the slave trade which started with an Act of 1807) triggered the biggest government compensation scheme in British history, only surpassed by the buy out of financial organisations following the banking collapse of a few years ago. The records of the Slave Compensation Commission, set up to manage the distribution of the £20 million (in 1830s money) compensation, provide a more or less complete census of slave-ownership in the British Empire in the 1830s. Records for the people enslaved are, sadly but obviously, far less complete.

Cheers

Steve
 


Monty Python as a weapon, surely must be referring to the "Killer Joke" episode? That aside, this day in age I'd have to say the Sptfire. Bren gun would be up there as well.
 
Sterling was post war, loosely based on the Patchett, which in turn was based on two German designs, and the Bren was originally Czech, designed and built by CZ in Bruno, Czecheslovakia, and licence built, after conversion to .303 (hence curved magazine), at Enfield, UK.
The weapon representing Britain could well have been 'Bully Beef' - if not eaten, the tins could be thrown at the enemy !!
 
Bren was a Czech design so not the most British of weapons.
Comedy and satire can be nasty for your average despot so could be classed as a propaganda weapon.
Us experts can wax lyrical on how great the Enfield P-13 rifle was...Or I do...But Joe Q six-pack don't know much about stuff but the Spitfire does meet the criteria.
 
Tinned food was as vital in the ww1 as bullets. Not much shooting if your soldiers are starving to death.
In yet olde days, troops had to garrison over winter due to food availablity. But with canned goods you can shoot your rifle all year long.
 
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