Look, wherever you live in the world, Britain has probably tried to invade you at some point. That is a historic fact because new research claims that Britain—in our long, colorful, magnificent, slightly-shameful and occasionally cross-dressing history—we have invaded all but TWENTY TWO countries in the world. This new study found out that, at various times, Britain has invaded almost 90% of the countries around the planet. […] It’s not that we failed to invade those other twenty-two, it’s just that we basically forgot.
— John Oliver in The Bugle, about “All the Countries We’ve Ever Invaded and the Few We Never Got Round To”
For the curious, the 22 Britain never got round to are: Andorra, Belarus, Bolivia, Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Guatemala, Ivory Coast, Kyrgyzstan, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Mali, Marshall Islands, Monaco, Mongolia, Paraguay, Sao Tome and Principe, Sweden, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Vatican City. (See map, from the Telegraph, above.)
Generally, these are either land-locked nations/nations with few ports or small nations (that might have gone over-looked). But I’m disappointed about Sweden. It’s right fucking there.
France, meanwhile, holds the record of being invaded by the British the most, which Oliver suggests is because their food smells so good wafting across the Channel.
Places Britain sort of forgot to invade.