ASIN: B015QIMEYK
Publisher: unknown
Pages: 254
By going to war in 1939 to save its Empire, Britain destroyed it - this is the paradox explored in Edward Webb’s 'The Vanishing Empire'. In the immediate aftermath of 1945’s victory many assumed British power would soon be restored but, despite vanquishing its foes and getting its colonies back, Britain had failed to achieve its imperial war aims. Over the next few decades it learned that the true cost of victory against fascism was a new US-USSR dominated world order in which there was no place for the old British Empire/Commonwealth of 1939. In order to gloss over this reality, the loss of the colonies was instead presented as ‘decolonisation’ - an orderly process directed by London – rather than something made up as events rapidly unfolded. This interpretation persists today, taking physical form as the Commonwealth, but it is not much more than a self-comforting myth.The myth was ...
