Matters came to a head in May 1926, when the miners, long the most oppressed of the working classes, walked off the job. They were soon followed by the majority of the labor class, which brought the country nearly to a standstill. Reinforcing the hold that the aristocracy and the government had on the labor force, the Archbishop of the Church of England called the strike a sin “against the obedience owed to God,” and went on to say there was no moral justification for the walkout. In nine short days, the strike was broken, although the miners stayed on strike for another eight months before starvation drove them back to the pits. To emphasize its might, business forced the miners to accept even lower wages and longer hours in order to get their jobs back.

As books and movies have noted, India was the “Jewel in the Crown” of the British Empire, and a good part of the series covered this area of the world in greater detail, emphasizing how 100,000 British ruled over 300 million Indians. It showed the lifestyle of the aristocracy, including the tiger hunts, the parties, and how the officers and civilians in the occupying forces, as well as visiting dignitaries, were catered to in their every whim, including being carried in howdahs on the shoulders of human bearers.

A large portion of the series centered on the events leading up to, during, and following World War Two, which was when the Great Empire began to display its initial serious signs of crumbling. Indian activism had stepped up considerably since the turn of the 20th century, particularly after Mohandas Gandhi’s return to India in 1915. For the most part, the country rolled along pretty much as it had since the British assumed sovereignty, but with slow and steady growth in strength of the separatist movement.

The movement alternated between foundering and festering, based on Gandhi’s arrests and imprisonment, as well as political considerations, until England’s unilateral inclusion of India into World War Two. Matters progressed rapidly following the end of the war, and India was granted independence in 1947. For continuity’s sake, the film branched off to show the complete series of events that transpired in India, before reverting back to the political ramifications of World War Two as regards the remainder of the Empire, with only minor references to it.

In February 1942, the British defenses in the Far East collapsed, and Australia braced for invasion by the Japanese. Four days after the fall of Singapore, the Japanese bombed the northern city of Darwin, further widening the scope of the war.

Another area of dissent within the Empire at this time was Canada, whose general consensus of opinion was, “If they blundered into war, they can blunder out of it.” The government, however, supported the war, and Canada’s men entered the fray.