Britain: the End of Imperial Statehood

Abstract

It is one of the central themes of this study that European decolonizations after 1945, particularly in their African dimension after 1956, arose more directly from changing conditions within the metropoles than they did from any metamorphosis at the periphery. Somewhat gradually and partially in the initial post-war years, accelerating after 1950 and climaxing towards the end of that decade, metropolitan societies became uncoupled from imperial routines and assumptions, and, as we shall see, ultimately became actively hostile towards their residual traces. The motives in this process were very mixed, and the trajectory of experience on the part of the relevant European powers distinctively different. We have already seen how it was de Gaulle’s grasp of the distorting effects of colonial obligations which detonated French decolonization in sub-Saharan and North Africa. But it is the British case of this subtle revolution in the mores of west European power which is most suggestive, since it was this country whose traditions and reflexes had been so quintessentially ‘imperial’. To do full justice to this chameleon-like change would really require a full-length study on its own. This chapter, however, will seek to elucidate the fundamental shifts at work by a short treatment of the Suez crisis of 1956, followed by a commentary on the changing context and revisionist consequences of that dramatic Anglo-French démarche.