re: The sun never sets on the British Empire

Given the larger environment, not sure it's fair to say "we thumped them"

On the field it was a wash in tactical results, except the Americans were all hands on deck, and the British regarded the whole thing as an afterthought to Napoleon.

And they still crushed the American economy via a continental scale blockade.

Didn't really accomplish anything either. We never forced them to concede to our reasons to starting the war. They just persisted until Napoleons fall meant Britian no longer needed to continue.

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I'd argue that WWI was the beginning of the end of the British Empire. After losing the 13 colonies, Britain expanded greatly in Africa and India (the jewel of the empire). Additionally, in many of their colonies, there was a paradigm shift from a trading post model to a resource extraction and management model, making the colonies more profitable.

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Agreed

WWI began an era of nationalism within colonial regions. Indigenous people saw that they could govern themselves quicker and more justly than their British colonial overlords