"I did not become His Majesty's First Minister to preside over the liquidation of His empire."

But you did, Sir Winston, you did.

Here's a viral video about the dissolution of the great European empires.

It's a neat video, but it only shows half the story. The video names each piece of empire as it was granted independence or otherwise spun off. It would have been better if it first identified each piece as it was absorbed.

That approach would show, for example, how the British incrementally absorbed cities and kingdoms on the Indian sub-continent (Surat in 1613; Calcutta in 1757; Bengal in 1765; Punjab in 1849; Awadh in 1856) which, in 1947, became "India" -- a polity that had never before existed.