Download or read book The British End of the British Empire written by Sarah Stockwell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-30 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The end of empire in Britain itself is illuminated through explorations of its impact on key domestic institutions.
Download or read book The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781 1997 written by Piers Brendon and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-02-09 with total page 850 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLD NOTABLE BOOK After the American Revolution, the British Empire appeared to be doomed. Yet it grew to become the greatest, most diverse empire the world had seen. Then, within a generation, the mighty structure collapsed, a rapid demise that left an array of dependencies and a contested legacy: at best a sporting spirit, a legal code and a near-universal language; at worst, failed states and internecine strife. The Decline and Fall of the British Empire covers a vast canvas, which Brendon fills with vivid particulars, from brief lives to telling anecdotes to comic episodes to symbolic moments.
Download or read book The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire written by Peter Clarke and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2010-09-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sweeping, brilliantly vivid history of the sudden end of the British empire and the moment when America became a world superpower. "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire." Winston Churchill's famous statement in November 1942, just as the tide of the Second World War was beginning to turn, pugnaciously affirmed his loyalty to the world-wide institution that he had served for most of his life. Britain fought and sacrificed on a worldwide scale to defeat Hitler and his allies-and won. Yet less than five years after Churchill's defiant speech, the British Empire effectively ended with Indian Independence in August 1947 and the end of the British Mandate in Palestine in May 1948. As the sun set on Britain's Empire, the age of America as world superpower dawned. How did this rapid change of fortune come about? Peter Clarke's book is the first to analyze the abrupt transition from Rule Britannia to Pax Americana. His swiftly paced narrative makes superb use of letters and diaries to provide vivid portraits of the figures around whom history pivoted: Churchill, Gandhi, Roosevelt, Stalin, Truman, and a host of lesser-known figures though whom Clarke brilliantly shows the human dimension of epochal events. The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire is a captivating work of popular history that shows how the events that followed the war reshaped the world as profoundly as the conflict itself.
Download or read book The End of the British Empire written by John Darwin and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 2006-12-15 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 of colonial nationalism suddenly become overwhelming? Or had the British themselves decided that they no longer needed an empire, and that interests were better served by joining the rich man's club of Europe? In this short book, these and other theories are examined critically. The aim is not to present a detailed narrative of Britain's imperial retreat but to introduce the reader to the current state of debate in a rapidly expanding subject.
Download or read book Ends of British Imperialism written by William Roger Louis and published by I. B. Tauris. This book was released on 2006 with total page 1092 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pax Britannica to Pax Americana is the story of the British Empire from its late-nineteenth century flowering to its present extinction. Louis traces the British Empire from the scramble for Africa, the turbulent imperial history of the Second World War in Asia, and the mid-20th century rush to independence to the Suez crisis, the icon of empire's end. It forms the ideal platform from which to examine the aims and outcome of empire. This authoritative and highly engaging history appears at a time when interest in the history of the British Empire has, ironically, never been stronger, making Ends of British Imperialism a must-read item for both scholar and general reader.
Download or read book British culture and the end of empire written by Stuart Ward and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first major attempt to examine the cultural manifestations of the demise of imperialism as a social and political ideology in post-war Britain. Far from being a matter of indifference or resigned acceptance as is often suggested, the fall of the British Empire came as a profound shock to the British national imagination, and resonated widely in British popular culture. The sheer range of subjects discussed, from the satire boom of the 1960s to the worlds of sport and the arts, demonstrates how profoundly decolonisation was absorbed into the popular consciousness. Offers an extremely novel and provocative interpretation of post-war British cultural history, and opens up a whole new field of enquiry in the history of decolonisation.
Download or read book Negotiating the End of the British Empire in Africa 1959 1964 written by Peter Docking and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-12-02 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines conferences and commissions held for British colonial territories in East and Central Africa in the early 1960s. Until 1960, the British and colonial governments regularly employed hard methods of colonial management in East and Central Africa, such as instituting states of emergency and imprisoning political leaders. A series of events at the end of the 1950s made hard measures no longer feasible, including criticism from the United Nations. As a result, softer measures became more prevalent, and the use of constitutional conferences and commissions became an increasingly important tool for the British government in seeking to manage colonial affairs. During the period 1960-64, a staggering sixteen conferences and ten constitutional commissions were held for British colonies in East and Central Africa. This book is the first of its kind to provide a detailed overview of how the British sought to make use of these events to control and manage the pace of change. The author also demonstrates how commissions and conferences helped shape politics and African popular opinion in the early 1960s. Whilst giving the British government temporary respite, conferences and commissions ultimately accelerated the decolonisation process by transferring more power to African political parties and engendering softer perceptions on both sides. Presenting both British and African perspectives, this book offers an innovative exploration into the way that these episodes played an important part in the decolonisation of Africa. It shows that far from being dry and technical events, conferences and commissions were occasions of drama that tell us much about how the British government and those in Africa engaged with the last days of empire.
Download or read book Human Rights and the End of Empire written by Alfred William Brian Simpson and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 1188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The European Convention on Human Rights of 1950 established the most effective international system of human rights protection ever created. This is the first book that gives a comprehensive account of how it came into existence, of the part played in its genesis by the British government, and of its significance for Britain in the period between 1953 and 1966.
Download or read book Unfinished Empire written by John Darwin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 497 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Darwin's After Tamerlane, a sweeping six-hundred-year history of empires around the globe, marked him as a historian of "massive erudition" and narrative mastery. In Unfinished Empire, he marshals his gifts to deliver a monumental one-volume history of Britain's imperium-a work that is sure to stand as the most authoritative, most compelling treatment of the subject for a generation. Darwin unfurls the British Empire's beginnings and decline and its extraordinary range of forms of rule, from settler colonies to island enclaves, from the princely states of India to ramshackle trading posts. His penetrating analysis offers a corrective to those who portray the empire as either naked exploitation or a grand "civilizing mission." Far from ever having a "master plan," the British Empire was controlled by a range of interests often at loggerheads with one another and was as much driven on by others' weaknesses as by its own strength. It shows, too, that the empire was never stable: to govern was a violent process, inevitably creating wars and rebellions. Unfinished Empire is a remarkable, nuanced history of the most complex polity the world has ever known, and a serious attempt to describe the diverse, contradictory ways-from the military to the cultural-in which empires really function. This is essential reading for any lover of sweeping history, or anyone wishing to understand how the modern world came into being.
Download or read book Monarchy and the End of Empire written by Philip Murphy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-12 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the relationship between the British government, the Palace, and the modern Commonwealth since 1945 and argues that the monarchy's relationship with the Commonwealth, which was initially promoted by the UK as a means of strengthening imperial ties, increasingly became an impediment to British foreign policy.
Download or read book The British Empire written by William W. Lace and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the events leading to expansion of the British Empire and the variety of reasons for its eventual decline in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Three Victories and a Defeat written by Brendan Simms and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009 with total page 1140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title tells the story of Britain's scramble to world power in the 18th century and how, through hubris and incompetence, it lost almost everything it had gained.
Download or read book The British Press Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa written by Rosalind Coffey and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-01-30 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides fresh insights into how the British press affected both British perceptions of decolonisation in Africa and British policy towards it during the ‘wind of change’ period. It also reveals, for the first time, the extent to which British newspaper coverage was of relevance to African and white settler readerships. British newspapers informed the political strategies and civic cultures of African activists, nationalists, liberal whites in Africa, the staunchest of white settler communities, and the first governments of independent African states and their opponents. The British press, British public opinion and British journalists became etched into the lived experiences of the end of empire affecting Anglo-African and Anglo-settler relations to this day. Arguing that the press cast a transnational web of influence over the decolonisation process in Africa, the author explores the relationships between the British, African and settler public and political spheres, and highlights the mediating power of the British press during the late 1950s. The book draws from a range of British newspapers, official government documents, newspaper archives, interviews, memoirs, autobiographies and articles printed in African and white settler papers. It will be of interest to historians of decolonisation, Africa, the media and the British Empire.
Download or read book The British Empire and Commonwealth written by Martin Kitchen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 1996-08-14 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From its modest to its recent disappearance, the British Empire was an extraordinary and paradoxical entity. North America, Africa, South and Southeast Asia and Australasia and innumerable small islands and territories have been fundamentally shaped - economically, socially and politically - by a nation whose imperial drive came from a bewildering mixture of rapacity and moral zeal, of high-mindedness and viciousness, of strategic cunning and feckless neglect. Martin Kitchen has written a fascinating, crisp, informative account of the rise and fall of the British Empire, concentrating on the 19th and 20th centuries but giving the background of the 'First British Empire', which was lost with the creating of the United States of America. His book is of particular value in relating the importance of the Empire to Britain's success as the only genuinely world power in the Victorian era and to Britain's ability to win the two great wars of the 20th century.
Download or read book Canada and the End of Empire written by Phillip Buckner and published by UBC Press. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir John Seeley once wrote that the British Empire was acquired in “a fit of absence of mind.” Whatever the truth of this comment, it is certainly arguable that the Empire was dismantled in such a fit. This collection deals with a neglected subject in post-Confederation Canadian history – the implications to Canada and Canadians of British decolonization and the end of empire. Canada and the End of Empire looks at Canadian diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom and the United States, the Suez crisis, the changing economic relationship with Great Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, the role of educational and cultural institutions in maintaining the British connection, the royal tour of 1959, the decision to adopt a new flag in 1964, the efforts to find a formula for repatriating the constitution, the Canadianization of the Royal Canadian Navy, and the attitude of First Nations to the changed nature of the Anglo-Canadian relationship. Historians in Commonwealth countries tend to view the end of British rule from a nationalist perspective. Canada and the End of Empire challenges this view and demonstrates the centrality of imperial history in Canadian historiography. An important addition to the growing canon of empire studies and imperial history, this book will be of interest to historians of the Commonwealth, and to scholars and students interested in the relationship between colonialism and nationalism.
Download or read book The End of the British Empire written by John Darwin and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1991 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This short book examines theories of why Britain declined as an imperial force and joined the rich man's club of Europe.
Download or read book Who Killed the British Empire written by George Woodcock and published by . This book was released on 2010-02-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who killed the British Empire? Why did history's largest imperial system collapse dramatically in the years following the Second World War? In this book, George Woodcock seeks to uncover the conspiracy of human wills and impersonal circumstances that brought the Second British Empire to its sudden end. The book opens in 1930with the Empire at the point of its greatest expansion. Unexpectedly, three events in that year were to have a cataclysmic effect and start the Empire on an irreversible decline --Gandhi's Salt March, the surrender of Weihaiwei to the Chinese nationalists, and the negotiations leading to the Statute of Westminster, in which Canada was the leading advocate of dominion progress towards virtual independence. Conducting the reader along the great imperial sea-routes to visit the territories of the Empire at its height, Professor Woodcock shows how lands were swallowed up in order to protect the route to India and to the great market of the China Coast, and then as expediently abandoned when their useful role had expired. He explains how, in Canada, the first serious challenges to the integrity of the Empire were made in the struggle for responsible government, which later developed into the struggle for dominion status and virtual independence. He then examines the reasons for the loss of India, the possession in which British Imperial prestige was most concentrated, and in the final chapters he shows how the collapse of the Empire followed necessarily from the liberation of India. Professor Woodcock finally rejects the view that any one man can be held primarily responsible for the death of the Empire. His book shows how complex a web of influences held the destiny of one of the world's greatest and most powerful institutions through its rise and inevitable fall, and the manner of that relatively bloodless fall is probably the only uniquely significant outcome of the flowering of the British Empire. George Woodcock's versatility and productivity have made him a living legend among Canadian writers. He is author or editor of more than forty books, including volumes of poetry, and criticism, books of travel and history about several parts of the world, and important biographical studies of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, Herbert Read and others. He has written extensively about Canadian history and literature and is the founder and editor of the journal Canadian Literature.
