BRITISH EMPIRE.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, those countries colored pink in British school atlases made up the largest empire the world had ever known, encompassing nearly one-quarter of the world's landmass and more than 25 percent of its people. By the end of the 1960s, however, the empire upon which "the sun never set" had shattered into more than forty independent nation-states, most of which found a new status of legal equality with Britain in the Commonwealth. The first to fall out of the imperial tree in the 1920s and 1930s were the so-called White Dominions: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the Irish Free State. After World War II they were followed by Britain's major colonies in Asia and Africa; for example, India and Pakistan (in 1947), Malaya (in 1957; expanded to form Malaysia in 1963), Nigeria (in 1960), and Kenya (in 1963). British power retracted also in those countries where Britain had not exercised complete colonial control. Hence, in China after 1949, the victory of Mao Zedong's (1893–1976) communists in the civil war brought about the end of the special concessions afforded to the "foreign devils" in ports like Shanghai, and British companies were effectively nationalized without compensation during the 1950s. Britain retained a scattering of rocks and islands around the globe, but even Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. In 2005 there were only 190,000 residents of British colonies, which were restyled "UK Overseas Territories" in 1999. It is tempting, therefore, to regard the twentieth century history of the empire as one long sad and sorry tale of ruination. However, as John Gallagher has pointed out, the decline and fall of the British imperial system was punctuated by significant periods of revival.

WORLD WAR I AND ITS AFTERMATH

One such era of resurrection, indicating that there was still plenty of life left in the old imperial dog, occurred during World War I, when the extra resources provided by Britain's colonies and Dominions gave Britain a significant edge in the global struggle with Germany and its allies. Canadian flour saved Britain from hunger, and one-third of the British army's munitions in France during 1917–1918 were made in the North American dominion. Concurrent controls on strategic raw materials, such as Malaya's bountiful rubber and tin exports, denied such vital supplies to Britain's enemies. More important still was the manpower contribution from the empire: 1.3 million soldiers from the Dominions, around one million from India, seventy thousand from west and east Africa, and about ten thousand from the Caribbean assisted the imperial war effort, as well as the numberless nurses and Red Cross volunteers from Britain's overseas territories who tended to the wounded. Moreover, as a victor, Britain was a principal benefactor from "the repartition of the colonial world" (Nasson, p. 147), which was a central feature of the peace treaties after 1919. As such, the empire reached its greatest territorial extent in the early 1920s: Britain succeeded to the administration of German colonies in Africa (Tanganyika particularly), but, more importantly, the United Kingdom was confirmed as the paramount power in the Middle East in its internationally recognized role as protector of various ex-Ottoman territories (Palestine and Iraq notably). Thus the Indian "jewel in the crown" was more secure than ever.

IMPERIAL CONSOLIDATION IN THE INTERWAR YEARS

This is not to deny that there were significant nationalist challenges to the empire both during and in the immediate aftermath of World War I in India, Ireland, and Egypt, which resulted in considerable devolution of imperial authority. Hence, Ireland (bar the northern counties of Ulster) emerged as a Dominion in 1921, Egypt regained its independence in 1922, and India received various forms of self-government culminating in the 1935 Government of India Act (which proposed eventual self-government for India as a Dominion). Moreover, the 1931 Statute of Westminster confirmed that all the Dominions were legally independent in all internal and external matters. Constitutional change in Egypt, India, and the Dominions need not be interpreted, however, as symptoms of "imperialism in decline" since, as Darwin ("Imperialism in Decline?") notes, such changes were calculated to provide the empire with a new "streamlined efficiency." Egyptian independence was seriously qualified by ongoing British dominance of the cotton trade and control of Egypt's foreign and military affairs to safeguard the Suez Canal, through which passed Britain's trade to and from India, the Far East, and Australasia. An additional Anglo-Egyptian treaty in 1936 allowed for the stationing of ten thousand troops in Egypt during peacetime. In a similar vein, Iraq's entry into the League of Nations in 1932 was limited by established sovereign British rights over military bases, and the right of Britain to utilize all Iraq's military facilities in time of war. Devolution in India, meanwhile, merely deflected nationalist energies to provincial government as British administrators continued to control what mattered—overall economic and military policy—in Delhi. India did introduce tariffs that severely dented Lancashire's textile exports to the subcontinent, but the territory remained a huge field for British financial interests and an invaluable source of military troops for imperial emergencies. Political independence notwithstanding, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada remained reliant on the Royal Navy for their defense and dependent on the City of London for their investments.

The fundamental basis of the United Kingdom's overseas strength—its economy—was undoubtedly tottering in the interwar years. As a consequence of World War I, Britain had emerged as a major debtor to the United States and was unable to resurrect the prewar gold standard, while the global Great Depression after 1929 increasingly exposed a lack of international competitiveness on the part of the British manufacturing industry. However, this relative economic weakness tended to encourage the greater economic integration of the empire. During the 1930s the sterling bloc unified and regulated the empire's financial and monetary affairs as never before, while imperial trade preferences and quotas secured colonial markets for ailing British industrial exports in return for holding open the British market for colonial commodity exports. As such, the empire ensured that British foreign trade just about stayed in the black: at the end of the 1930s Britain's overseas trade balance was just under £2 million thanks to the huge surplus of £150 million that Britain enjoyed with the empire. Links with the white settler territories were further cemented after World War I by an upsurge in imperial emigration from the United Kingdom: British nationals who journeyed to the colonies between 1900 and 1904 numbered 465,924 (representing 43 percent of all extra-European journeys by Britons), but between 1925 and 1929, 576,146 British émigrés (over three-quarters of the total) ended up in colonial destinations (and overwhelmingly in British North America and Australasia). In metropolitan Britain, meanwhile, imperial propaganda was probably at its height in the interwar years in the form of grand public exhibitions; popular adventure stories for children; the new mass media of radio and the cinema; the annual celebration of Empire Day in most schools; and in the posters of the Empire Marketing Board, which admonished British consumers to purchase Jamaican bananas, Gold Coast cocoa, Australian currants, Burmese rice, Kenyan coffee, Straits Settlements pepper, and Ceylonese tea.

WORLD WAR II—MOBILIZATION
AND COLLAPSE?

The empire once again loyally came to Britain's rescue during World War II. Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand supplied, and paid the costs of, some 2.68 million fighting personnel. Even 43,000 citizens of the Irish Free State enlisted in British or Commonwealth units, despite their government's policy of remaining stubbornly neutral. India confirmed itself as a vital martial source with more than 2.25 million personnel in the imperial armed forces, and as a crucial base for operations in the Middle East and the rest of Asia. In addition, there were some 374,000 Africans serving in all the armed forces and about 6,400 West Indians in the Royal Air Force alone. About 15,000 seamen in the merchant navy were of colonial origin (a staggering one in three of whom died trapped in the engine rooms of sinking ships). Egypt, meanwhile, was effectively reoccupied with the Suez Canal Base—the world's largest military emplacement by the end of the war—playing a vital role in the defeat of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy through supplying the Middle East, North Africa, and southern Europe. Once again, in time of crisis, the colonies proved invaluable resource assets in other ways too: commodity production was stepped up and colonial governments extended their bulk-buying powers for foodstuffs and raw materials. As such, the new sterling area was more tightly controlled than the prewar bloc. In certain cases, conscripted, forced labor was exploited in Africa to boost production vital for the prosecution of the war effort: in Tanganyika nearly eighty-five thousand workers produced rubber and sisal; in northern Nigeria more than one hundred thousand peasants mined tin.

Such expediencies were resorted to precisely because the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia after December 1941 had deprived Britain of vital raw materials. The fall of the supposedly impregnable fortress colony of Singapore in February 1942 was regarded by Britain's wartime prime minister Winston Churchill (1874–1965) as a disaster and has often been regarded as a watershed in the history of British imperialism. Defeat by the Japanese exposed a fundamental weakness of the post–World War I empire—Britain's military under-capacity and "imperial overstretch" meant that it could no longer fight a war on two fronts, not least because the Royal Navy no longer ruled all of the waves. As early as the 1920s it was clear that Britain faced major naval competitors in the fleets of the United States and Japan. Moreover, the sinking of the battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse off the coast of Malaya, following the assault on the U.S. naval base of Pearl Harbor, which preceded the Japanese occupation of Britain's colonies east of India, were ominous indicators that airpower had superseded naval power. At the same time, for an imperial system built upon the alleged superiority of the white race, defeat by an Asian power was a huge psychological blow for the empire's prestige.

DECOLONIZATION AFTER 1945

Nevertheless, after the surrender of Japan in August 1945, the British returned to their colonial possessions in Burma, Malaya, Borneo, Singapore, and Hong Kong. In repetition of 1918, and despite the election of Clement Attlee's (1883–1967) Labour government, there was a new sense of imperial mission in post-1945 Britain.

Although India and Palestine were given up, British indebtedness (especially to the United States) after World War II led to a new phase of colonial exploitation; under the revitalized sterling area, Malaya's huge sales of rubber and tin to the United States, for example, earned dollars vital for metropolitan recovery, as did to a lesser extent the Gold Coast's cocoa and Nigeria's palm oil. Additionally, fuel oil from the British-protected Middle East propped up the crisis-ridden postwar metropolitan economy through the avoidance of hard-currency expenditure. A revived imperial commitment was also evident in grand British plans, such as the ill-fated East African Groundnuts scheme, to produce dollar-saving foodstuffs, further reducing economic dependence on the United States. The Empire-Commonwealth was probably more important for Britain from an economic standpoint than ever before: in terms of volume, some 48 percent of British imports were derived from the colonies and Dominions in exchange for 58 percent of UK exports between 1946 and 1949 (the corresponding figures for a decade earlier were 40 percent and 49 percent). Before World War II some 50 percent of British capital exports were directed to the colonies and Dominions and by 1950–1954 this figure had leapt to 65 percent. At the same time, a revitalized Empire-Commonwealth held out the prospect of Britain returning to international power—political greatness as an alternative "Third Force" between the United States and the Soviet Union. In exchange for increased exploitation, colonial peoples were offered a new "partnership," a stakeholder role in the imperial enterprise, through (in Africa particularly) the opening up of local government to aspiring nationalist politicians with the prospect of eventual self-government on the prewar Dominions model.

Even so, with swift independence ceremony after even swifter independence ceremony, the population under British colonial rule dramatically contracted one hundred times from 700 million to 7 million in the twenty years after 1945. Why did the empire collapse so rapidly in the wake of World War II? One obvious reason was the force of popular nationalism in the colonies. The real innovator here was Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948), who transformed the Indian National Congress from an elite talking shop into a mass movement of peasants, industrial workers, and entrepreneurs after World War I and led a series of peaceful non-cooperation campaigns against the Raj. These climaxed in the Quit India campaign of 1942 as the Japanese army was threatening India's borders. Hopelessly understaffed, the empire relied on "collaboration" with colonial peoples. Hence, when, by 1945, much of the Indian police and army had gone over to Gandhi, the Attlee government was forced to withdraw. Gandhi's example was followed by other nationalists; in Malaya, for example, Tunku Abdul Rahman (1903–1990) extracted an elected majority from the British in the new federal council of 1955 after the Alliance Party threatened noncooperation. Others, such as the communists in Malaya and the Mau Mau in Kenya, chose violent insurrection as the means to bring the empire down, tying up British military resources in horrific guerrilla warfare and making colonial rule unbearably costly. What often undermined British rule, however, was internecine conflicts and tensions or "competing nationalisms" in the last phase of colonialism. During 1946 and 1947 Hindu and Muslim Indians were more concerned with killing each other than struggling against the retreating British. The result—much to British chagrin—was partition of the subcontinent into a Hindu-dominated India and a Muslim-dominated Pakistan, and the tragic deaths of upward of one million Indians and Pakistanis. In the 1950s and 1960s territorial parochialism disrupted British plans for postcolonial federations in central Africa, the West Indies, South Arabia, and "Greater Malaysia."

But the empire's demise would not have been possible without the British themselves. The 1940s and early 1950s had been a period of integrated sterling-area economic development in which colonies were expected to produce commodities that would either earn or save dollars while simultaneously absorbing ailing British manufactured goods. By the mid-1950s, however, Britain was back on its feet, and Conservative governments appreciated that the big gains in the international economy were to be made through trade and investments with North America, Europe, and Japan, and not with the colonies. Britain was also determined to secure a nuclear weapons capacity via cooperation with the United States. Hence, membership in the European Economic Community (EEC) and the "special relationship" with the United States were perceived as the new paths to greatness. At the same time, the British hoped to maintain friendly relations with nationalists in the colonies by granting swift independence. In other words, Britain's global economic and strategic interests would be maintained in the new multiracial Commonwealth. Malaysia and Singapore, for example, continued to peg their currencies to the pound sterling and retained British military bases into the 1970s.

Yet, preserving global sway through the Commonwealth was a fantasy because the third reason why the empire could not survive was that British economic and military might had been superseded by the superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union. In contrast to Britain, the Americans and the Soviets had grown much more powerful as a consequence of World War II. In the ensuing Cold War Washington, D.C. came to see the empire as a hindrance in the global struggle with communism. This came to a head during the Suez Crisis of 1956 when Britain attempted to denationalize the Egyptian canal and reassert itself in the Middle East. Fearing that the Arab states would side with the USSR, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) flexed his nation's considerable financial muscle: he would not support the tottering British economy unless Prime Minister Anthony Eden (1897–1977) withdrew British troops from Egypt. Eden was replaced by Harold Macmillan (1894–1986) in 1957. Macmillan accepted Britain's role as a "junior partner" to the United States and, after 1960, the "wind of change" blew through Africa to prevent the continent from falling to the Soviets and/or Red China. The British Empire collapsed, then, because three phenomena coincided and reinforced each other: colonial nationalism, changing British priorities, and the Cold War.

THE POSTCOLONIAL COMMONWEALTH AND THE IMPERIAL REMNANTS

From the 1960s, however, an important worldwide legacy of the British Empire remained through the continued functioning of the Commonwealth. The ex-colonial club was transformed from the exclusive preserve of Britain and the White Dominions to a multiracial institution with the accession of India, Pakistan, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) to its ranks in the late 1940s; Ghana's election after 1957 as the first Black African member; and the admission of the smaller ex-colonies, such as Cyprus, after 1960. Beginning in the late 1950s, mass immigration from the non-white Commonwealth—the Indian subcontinent and the Caribbean particularly—produced a genuinely multicultural Britain as well. The British had hoped that the multiracial Commonwealth would serve as a surrogate empire, as another pragmatic streamlined adaptation of colonialism to informally bolster the United Kingdom's global position. However, in practice, the Commonwealth emerged more as a force for third world solidarity rather than a neocolonial conserver of British world power, especially after white supremacist South Africa left the Commonwealth in 1961. Despite British hopes, the multiracial Commonwealth never served as a formal military alliance—India, for example, did not allow the stationing of British troops after independence, while Britain's financial difficulties in the 1960s, culminating in the great sterling devaluation of November 1967, led to the British military withdrawal from the postcolonial bases "east of Suez." Britain did retain considerable investments in ex-colonies, and Commonwealth trade remained important to Britain until the 1970s.

However, the main growth areas for both British manufacturing and capital exports tended to be with Western Europe, reflected in Britain's final entry to the EEC in 1973. British dreams of upholding economic influence through decolonization were shattered by a number of other factors during the 1960s: the reduction of sterling balances in London and the loss of British control over Commonwealth currencies; an emphasis on import-substitution industrialization, as well as the extension of state intervention in postcolonial economies; the emergence of more generous international lending agencies, such as the United States, Japan, the International Monetary Fund, and even the Soviet Union and Communist China; and the decline of British industrial performance, compounded by the end of Commonwealth preference. British influence in the Commonwealth suffered another setback with increased restrictions on non-white immigration to the United Kingdom after 1962. Nevertheless, Britain has continued to exhibit a determination to act in a quasi-imperial manner in Hong Kong before 1997, and most notably in 1982, when a short war with Argentina ensured that the two thousand inhabitants of the Falkland Islands would remain British, and after 2003 in the invasion and occupation of Iraq (albeit in junior partnership with the United States).

See alsoColonialism; Commonwealth; Decolonization; Egypt; Gandhi, Mahatma; India; World War I; World War II.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barratt Brown, Michael. After Imperialism. London, 1963. Classic study of the economic aspects of terminal colonialism and its immediate aftermath.

Bickers, Robert A. Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai. London, 2003. Fascinating and insightful narrative of Britain's "informal empire" in twentieth century China through the experiences of an "ordinary" Briton.

Brown, Judith M., and William Roger Louis, eds. The Twentieth Century. Vol. 4 of The Oxford History of the British Empire. Oxford, U.K., 1999. Indispensable collection of high-quality essays, written by experts in their fields, on all aspects of the British imperial experience.

Cain, P. J., and A. G. Hopkins. British Imperialism, 1688–2000. 2nd ed. Harlow, U.K., 2001. Magisterial, if contentious, economic interpretation of British imperialism over four centuries.

Darwin, John. "Imperialism in Decline?" The Historical Journal 12 (1980). Seminal article that points to the considerable vitality of the interwar imperial system.

——. Britain and Decolonisation: The Retreat from Empire in the Post–war World. Houndmills, Basingstoke, U.K., 1988. Early comprehensive study of post-1945 decolonization that remains a central work.

——. The End of the British Empire: The Historical Debate. Oxford, U.K., 1991. Excellent analysis of the historiographical debate on why the British Empire collapsed so rapidly after 1945.

Dumett, Raymond E., ed. Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Imperialism: The New Debate on Empire. London, 1999. A vital companion volume of critical essays for Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism.

Gallagher, John. The Decline, Revival and Fall of the British Empire: The Ford Lectures and Other Essays. Cambridge, U.K., 1982. Contains a compelling, and frequently cited, essay on the peaks and troughs of British imperialism during the twentieth century.

Holland, R. F. European Decolonization, 1918–1981: An Introductory Survey. Basingstoke, U.K., 1985. Masterful comparative analysis of European imperialism and decolonization in the twentieth century, which, controversially, argues that the main motor behind the end of the European empires was to be found in the changing priorities and strategies of European policy makers.

Nasson, Bill. Britannia's Empire: Making a British World. Stroud, Gloucestershire, U.K., 2004. Elegantly and entertainingly written authoritative account of the rise and fall of the empire from the sixteenth century to the present day.

Smith, Simon C. British Imperialism, 1750–1970. Cambridge, U.K., 1998. Highly recommended textbook with particularly useful chapters on imperialism and nationalism in India and decolonization in Africa.

White, Nicholas J. Decolonisation: The British Experience since 1945. London and New York, 1999. Studentoriented synthesis and analysis of British late-colonial policy, the rise of anticolonial nationalism, and the international aspects of decolonization.

——. "The Survival, Revival and Decline of British Economic Influence in Malaysia, 1957–70." Twentieth Century British History 14 (2003): 222–242. Groundbreaking article on the British economic experience in an independent Commonwealth country, with relevance for the postcolonial situation in general.

Nicholas J. White