I am not sure if that's true. Between 1783 and 1922, the British Empire did have an impressive military record, but it was not perfect.

One specific case I can recall is the First Anglo-Afghan War. Part of the 'Great Game' with the Russian Empire, the British attempted to invade Afghanistan via India in 1839. The region was considered unstable, and thus vulnerable to a Russian land invasion from the north. The British could not allow this, and they needed to secure it preemptively.

The invasion began well for the British. After setting up camp in Kandahar, capturing the fort of Ghazni and defeat the troops of Dost Muhammed (a prominent afghan leader). The British then set up a puppet ruler in Kabul, Shah Shuja. The British then left 8,000 occupying troops in the country, the rest returning to India.

That's when things began to go south.

Within two years, many disaffected Afghan tribes began to flock around Akbar Khan, the son of Dost Muhammed, in an attempt to overthrow Shuja and the British. There was mob violence, ending in the deaths of several senior British officers. The tension was palpable. Eventually, Britain's chief representative, William Hay Macnaghten, organized a meeting with Khan to offer him the viziership in exchange for continued British occupation, all while secretly paying to have him killed. Khan was informed of this, and at the meeting Macnaghten was apprehended and killed, dragged through the streets of Kabul and propped up in the Bazaar.

Lord Elphinstone, the British commander, then figured that the best option was to retreat. He made an agreement with Khan to let the British retreat to their garrison at Jalalabad, 90 miles from Kabul. Of course, Khan lied again, and the retreat was one of the greatest disasters in British Imperial history. among the 16,000 who retreated, 12,000 of which were civilians (families of the soldiers and others), only one single European made it to Jalalabad, along with five or six sepoys. The rest were picked off by Afghan tribesmen equipped with rifles, or succumbed to the cold in the snowbound passes.

Nearly forty years later, the British tried to invade Afghanistan again, this time successfully. So your author may be technically correct in the sense that the Afghans ultimately could not resist the British, but that is a very loose interpretation as it takes place over four decades and involves two completely separate conflicts. When it comes down to it, British occupation was ejected by the Afghans in the First Anglo-Afghan War.

As for your second question, I cannot answer that. I will leave it to someone who knows better. Hope my answer helped!

You would be hard pressed to find any large scale defeats of Western European powers in the period that you mentioned. Yes, Spain lost colonies and Italy had a hard time in her colonial empire. But at the end of the day the very question itself brings up some difficulties. Both the British, French, Dutch, and other colonial powers were defeated by indigenous peoples in this time period. These very defeats were often the major reason these invaded countries didn't turn into colonies.

Examples of these cases where indigenous peoples successfully fought off European forces are the French invasion of Algeria, the war in the Sudan or the Boer war (the indigenous part is debatable)and the Atjeh war.

The cases where indigenous peoples would outfight modern European powers would steeply decline in the given time frame. At the start many invasions were obstructed by relatively unreliable weapons and diseases but with the huge innovations in both weaponry (especially the machine gun) and medicine these obstacles grew smaller and smaller.

Sources: The Reality of War - Leonce Patry, The River War - Winston Churchill, De Sterke Arm De Zachte Hand - Paul Moeyes, Various papers on the subject.

Whilst it is mostly true that the British Empire was militarily quite successful, its not accurate to say that no country was able to "eject" the Empire. It does come to depend on what your definition of "eject" is, but there are several obvious cases where British forces were sent into retreat in several areas.

So, the giant elephant in the room here is Afghanistan. The British Empire had shared borders (now modern Indian/Pakistan's borders) with Afghanistan for some time prior to the beginning of the nineteenth century but it wasn't until 1838 that the Empire actually invaded.

The lead up to the British invasion of Afghanistan essentially boils down to a colossal fuck-up, with a healthy dose of idiotic bureaucracy and international suspicion. For a pretty well written narrative of it, I'd suggest having a look at William Darymple's Return of a King. Suffice it to say, the reason for invading Afghanistan in 1838 was basically "if we don't, the Russians will".

The British plan, then was to invade the Country, install a previously ejected sovereign as a puppet, and then profit. The first part was successful, as was the second, but then it all went wrong. The newly (re)installed King began to resent British interference, most of the British army was resented by the Afghans because of their unseemly behaviour. Oh, and the Tribal leaders had never really been pacified, leading to a supply train that stretched through some of the most inhospitable mountain passes in the world, and under the control of aggressive tribesmen delighted by the new source of plunder that was trotting by.

By 1841 the situation had become untenable, an insurrection in Kabul left the British army surrounded and besieged in the cantonments that they had built. The British eventually agreed to surrender, and march back from Kabul to the nearest garrison in Jalalabad on the border, as the story goes of 4,500 soldiers and 12,000 camp followers who retreated, supposedly there was only one who survived, William Brydon, a surgeon with the East India Company. The remaining garrisons, at Ghazni, Kandahar and Jalalabad were also besieged, Ghazni was destroyed, but Kandahar and Jalalabad were held. With the coming of spring, reinforcements from India allowed the army to defeat their besiegers. The new Governor-General of India ordered a complete withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Army complied, but retook its original garrisons, rescued some prisoners, laid waste to much of the country and then marched out.

After this the British Empire tried twice more to invade Afghanistan, both times ending in much the same way, initial success, overextension/problems with the locals, then an uprising, the second Anglo-Afghan war ended with the British enforcing a sort of protectorate in Afghanistan, but their control over the nation eroded over time. Eventually leading to a declaration of war against Britain and India in 1919, and the Third Afghan war which eventually resulted in Afghan independence, on technical grounds, and by the early 20s, in actuality.

-edit-

I meant to also add another relatively significant example of the Dervish state, which was established by Muhammad Abdullah Hassan known as "The Mad Mullah", in the Horn of Africa in the early 20th century that for twenty years successfully resisted four British invasions, and several Italian invasions, eventually succumbing in the 20s thanks to what was basically the very first campaign of the RAF.

The popular answer will of course be, "oh no, of course not, the British got their asses handed to them any number of times," but even though it's certainly true that they suffered some defeats, it is emphatically not the case that they were just one more among a group of peers which, if I've understood your question properly, is what you're really asking about.

As for why the British were better at maintaining their colonial empire than were their European counterparts, since I don't have a lot of time to pour into this comment, I'll put it in highly simplistic but nonetheless basically accurate terms; the British Royal Navy was by far the most powerful military force on the seas during the time in question. Brittania could, and basically did, rule the waves. It is no accident, for example, that the areas where the British Empire did have problems with governance were generally landlocked as in Afghanistan or Sudan.

While there are many very well-informed contributors to this sub, I think that we are sometimes inclined to err overly on the side of overturning popular conceptions of history, and in this case, I would argue that if the British Empire appeared to be the most powerful force for colonialism during the time-frame you mention, it really is just because it was, in consequence of its navy, exactly that.

Arthur Herman's "To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World" is my primary source here (even though I freely admit that he's kind of dodgy in some respects), but I also draw from H.F.B. Wheeler, "The Story of the British Navy," which was originally published in 1922 and so might almost be seen as a primary source for the end of your era.

Okay I'm home now and have access to my laptop; I apologise for the double post.

The question is very vague and it depends how you define "eject" During this period Britain had a very good military record as did all the other imperial powers, however, the British suffered from several recurring bad habits. They often underestimated their opponents which lead to embarrassing reversals and defeats, they often didn't provide enough resources to their forces which led to setbacks and campaigns which lasted much longer than they should have and they also had a bad habit of allowing incompetent or brash generals to command way above their skill level (Gordon of the Sudan being a good example here.)

The British had to fight two or more campaigns to install their will in several countries such as Burma, The Sudan, The Zulu's, The Boer Wars and Afghanistan. So while they were initially "ejected" they often returned with greater numbers, better supply lines and better generals. Furthermore, the Bolsheviks forced a withdrawal of Allied troops during the Russian civil war as did Ataturk during the Turkish Independence War.

So the statement in my opinion is false, at least half a dozen countries ejected the British either totally or for a duration of time before being subjugated in a follow-up campaign. There are also several examples of the British very nearly being defeated, notably the Boxer Rebellion in China.

As for where they "better" than other Europeans. That is a very complex question in of itself, but I would say 'no'

France managed to build an Empire in Africa that could rival Britain, but British victories in the Seven Years War and the instability of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars curtailed French opportunities for expansion in my opinion. Spain peaked early, but by the time period in question was very obviously in decline. Austria-Hungary was more pre-occupied with the Turkish threat and trying to maintain hegemony in Central Europe, Italy, The Balkans and Eastern Europe.

Russia's own expansions are epic in scale and it was this expansion that fueled the Great Game and the invasion of Afghanistan.

Italy due to the lateness of its unification had to be content with the scraps the other powers hadn't yet taken and Ottoman Turkey was also in decline by this period, trying to fend of Russia, French and British influence in the Levant and of course the rebellious governors of Egypt.
So it's not so much that the British Empire was better, per-say, at defeating non-Europeans. but more they had worked bloody hard to stop other competing powers from being able to expand in the first place.

The claim is pretty vague, especially whether the author was speaking exclusively about military, political or economical extent or some measure of all of them. As such, it can not be answered exactly.

I'll argue with what I think the author may be contesting: Political influence, I would roundly support the author's claim, even with Afghanistan the British continued to operate there as political agents and brought Nadir Shah to the throne, even if he didn't particularly follow the orders of the imperial power. Another example was the slow dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, which Britain had a large reason in the creation of Romania, Bulgaria etc. Or the creation of Uruguay which the British shrewdly created as a settlement between Brazil and Argentina but also to have another trade partner.

The limits of this was perhaps areas the British had negotiated as another power's sphere of influence, or those areas in which the British did not really have any interests. But indeed this was an era marked by the Great Powers rather than the British although the British were undoubtedly the most powerful.

To give you an idea of this, the British did find themselves having to negotiate rather than act as hegemon. The opium wars are perhaps the apogee of British colonial power politics but this was a European venture. And even as China disintegrated it's imperial power, the British found they had to accommodate the Russians, Germans and Japanese into their plans for China. Similarly, after the Venezuelan crisis of 1895, the British found they could not act in the America without the involvement of the United States.

Even before the British found themselves uncomfortable under the duress of global empire and with so many rivals. The French were unhappy at their occupation of Egypt, the invasion of Afghanistan was a response to Russia pushing closer to India.

Indeed, later in the 20th Century it was the realisation that Germany could rival Britain that forced them from their informal isolation into the bloc of European alliances of France and Russia.

With regard to Irish independence there needs to be a bit more nuance than simply stating that the British were ejected. The Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921 wasn't analogous to the treaty between the United States and Britain in 1783 . Firstly, the delegation sent to negotiate a peace settlement in London weren't an extension of a revolutionary movement in an ascendent position of power. The revolutionaries were running very low on supplies of both guns and ammunition, large numbers had been imprisoned and the British were increasing military personnel in the country. The entire war was essentially a guerrilla campaign on the part of the Irish, and there were no pivotal events analogous to the battle of Saratoga or the siege and capture of Yorktown, in which the Americans demonstrated that they could conduct successful large scale regular military operations against the British. Furthermore, the proximity of Ireland to the British mainland ensured that supplies and reinforcements could be shipped quickly ( it's only a few hours transit across the Irish Sea ). Compare that to the weeks long transit across the rough Atlantic in the American War of Independence.

Secondly, the Irish didn't achieve complete freedom in 1922 and the revolutionaries didn't get everything they wanted. Ireland remained part of the Commonwealth and only acquired "dominion status", which entailed an equality in stature between the political entities but also acceptance of the British monarch as head of state, the swearing of an oath of allegiance to that monarch, and the right of Irish citizens to appeal to the British high court . Britain also retained 3 ports for the royal navy in the south, west and north which weren't relinquished until 1938, insisted that the pre-war civil service administration be retained and negotiated an agreement that the new Irish state would pay the pensions of the RIC (Irish police force under British rule ), which was to be disbanded . And then of course there was the partition of the country between a unionist north and an Irish Free State in the south, a consequence which still echoes to this day.

Overall, the Irish plenipotentiaries who signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty weren't in a position of power, and I think that's reflected in the terms of the agreement, which hardly implied a scenario in which the revolutionaries had landed heavy blows and demonstrated an ability to defeat British forces.

Also, and I'm not sure how much weight this actually had, but the British prime minister David Lloyd George gave the Irish delegation an ultimatum on December 5th : either the treaty would be signed by 10 p.m or an "immediate and terrible war" would resume. On December 6th at approximately 2 a.m the Anglo-Irish treaty was signed. Michael Collins, a primary revolutionary leader and one of the lead delegates dismissed the notion that this threat had much of an influence, but the proximity of the ultimatum to the actual signing of the treaty might suggest otherwise.