The End of the British Empire

by John Darwin

Book Overview

Within twenty years of victory in the Second World War Britain had ceased to be a world power and her global empire has dissolved into fragments. With what now seems astonishing rapidity, and empire three centuries old, which had reached its greatest extent as late as 1921, was transformed into more than fifty sovereign states. Why did this great transformation come about? Had Britain simply become too weak in a world of superpowers? Had the pressure...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0631164286
• ISBN13: 9780631164289
• Release Date: December 2006
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Length: 148 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 8.5" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Great look at the debates of Empire

This book provides an excellent brief overview to the historiography of the fall of the British Empire. It looks at the fall from a variety of angles and provides a nice conclusion that reminds readers that no one historiography is correct and that all must be taken together. The first calls for the argument that the British metropole tired of empire and popular opinion went against it. This derives from the Hughes and Cain argument of the gentlemanly class but takes a different viewpoint on it and while useful is probably the weakest of the bunch provided. The second course looked at is the economic course which is a compelling argument that shows that empire was not a profitable way to organize in the post 1945 period and the British abandoned the project. The third argument centers on the emerging bipolar world system which argues that the superpowers made Empire obsolete. A useful subset of this historiography is the fact that both the United States and USSR are anti-imperialist which works against British designs. On this note the last historiography considered is the one that focuses on the colonial localities and their emerging nationalism. The argument here is that too many authors focus on their specific country and lose sight of the bigger picture. This does provide an excellent look overall at the idea of how the empire fell apart and is a must read.