"In 1942 Sir Winston Churchill stirringly declared, ‘I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.' His fervent encomium of the Empire was almost religious in sentiment. The Empire stood as a ‘veritable rock of salvation in this drifting world.' It was the bulwark of the mother country in the struggle against Hitler without which ‘the good cause might yet have perished from the face of the earth.'
Yet within 20 years of this statement, the British Empire had for the most part vanished. Despite the intensity of Churchill's fervour and the fact that it was shared by many of his contemporaries, by the 1960s vast tracts of South East Asia, Palestine, the Indian Subcontinent, and Africa no longer flew the Union Jack.
This Imperial retreat was not something confined to Britain. Over the same period the French relinquished Syria, Vietnam, and much of West and North Africa. The Dutch were forced out of Indonesia, and the Portuguese colonies of Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau were subjected to a long-drawn-out war of decolonisation
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Full book review here.
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Hope you enjoy!.
Amiacalement
Armand