As long as they stick together under a strong Imam, they’re hard to beat. But after the Turks left in the mid-17th century, the Yemenis faced a much
smarter empire: the British. Very few countries held off that Empire for long. Between the Americans’ victory in 1783 and Irish independence in
1922, not one country was able to eject the Empire. Tens of millions died trying — brave, brilliant empires like the Sikhs and the Zulus; no one
succeeded. We forget that now, because . . . well, you know that amnesia flash device from Men in Black? It was actually the British Empire that
invented that thing, and asked the world to smile and say cheese when it decided to dissolve itself around 1960. And like Tommy Lee Jones in that
movie, their last act was to use the flash on themselves, so they could say in all truth, “Empire? What Empire?”
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