Empires

Machine guns and rifles are not what make a great empire. If you take a diverse group of people and force them under your control, all you will get is a diverse set of insurgencies and rebellions that you will have to put down time and time again. A lasting empire would be built on the goal of peaceful coexistence and unified by cultural appreciation instead of the suppression of another culture.

You would help others through hard times and in return get help. However bullets are cheaper than grain it seems. They always will be, too.

Little historical note. This is from a British campaign in the mid-1890s to conquer northern Pakistan. One reason why no one ever hears about it is because it failed. The British empire was powerful, but there were some things even they couldn't do. I find it interesting how, years before this campaign, there was another. It had to do with a British mission in Kabul, Afghanistan. Out of around 15,000 soldiers, men, women, and children, there was but one survivor when the British were driven out of Kabul. Now, this isn't the last time Afghanistan did something like this. In the 1980s the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and the insurgents beat the Russians at almost every turn. The Russians were using helicopters, tanks, and modern rifles. The insurgents were using mostly bolt action rifles, captured Russian weapons, and the occasional Stinger missile (supplied by the world's biggest peace-keeper, the good ol' USA). The insurgents resisted one of the most powerful war machines in the world, one we would have had quite a bit of trouble beating.

The rifles are Lee-Metfords and the machine gun is an early British Maxim.