Kings should pray to the gods for help against their friends, not their enemies

One of the remarkable things about the countries that colonised others the most in the last 400 years was how small they are. Portugal, one of the trailblazers, is two-and-a-half times smaller than Great Britain, which, given that the latter is around the size of Uganda, is very small.

Spain is about two times the size of Uganda, and slightly smaller than France, but these are largely the exceptions among the European colonial powers. You can fit five Netherlands within Uganda’s tiny boundaries and have room to spare, while Belgium is about 80 times smaller than the Democratic…