Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez, and Decolonization

by William Roger Louis

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.

Genres: History, British Literature, Middle East

1065 pages, Hardcover

First published August 25, 2006

About the author

William Roger Louis CBE FBA, also known as Wm. Roger Louis, or Roger Louis, informally, is an American historian, currently distinguished historian at the University of Texas at Austin. Louis is the Editor-in-Chief of The Oxford History of the British Empire, the former President of the American Historical Association, the former Chairman of the Department of State Historical Advisory Committee, and the Founding Director of the American Historical Association's National History Center in Washington, D.C.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Roger Louis is a giant among scholars of British imperialism. The editor of the Oxford History of the British Empire, for nearly half a century his scholarship has helped define the field. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Suez crisis he has collected his essays related to that defining episode. These not only cover the incident itself but a number of related topics – for as he explains, “the Suez crisis can be studied as an episode in decolonization and that decolonization itself . . . can best be understood in the context of the long colonial era extending from the British occupation of Egypt in 1882 to the death of Nasser in 1970 and the withdrawal of all troops East of Suez in the following year.”

Louis groups these essays into ten categories. After an introductory overview of Suez and decolonization, he provides an essay on colonial empires in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and four on “the scramble for Africa”. These are followed by four which examine the First World War and the mandates system, two on the British possessions of Singapore and Hong Kong, and four on India, Palestine and Egypt, which are linked together by the theme of impending independence. After five essays on decolonization in general, he includes six on aspects of the Suez crisis itself and four more on Britain’s withdrawal from the rest of the Middle East in its aftermath before finishing with three essays on the historiography of his field.

Though all but one of these essays have been published before now, bringing them together allows Louis to draw out three main themes. The first is the one which occasioned the volume – the study of Suez in the broader context of decolonization. This last, failed effort to hold onto the empire through force led the British to attempt to maintain some vestige of their influence through more informal means, which is the second theme of his collection. Finally, as British control gradually slipped, new states emerged throughout Africa and Asia; it is the consequences of their emergence which forms the final theme Louis emphasizes.

Taken together, these essays represent a formidable body of work on one of the key developments of modern times. Though some of the essays have been reworked, the basic scholarship within them remains as informative and insightful as it was when they were first published. Delving into the pages of this book provides insight not only into the demise of the British Empire, but into how it shaped and defined the world in which we live today. No student of British imperial history should be without this volume, and anyone interested in understanding the twentieth century will profit from reading it.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 2 out of 5]

the one-line review

"Critics argue that Louis overestimates Britain's ability to retain influence after granting independence"

I think that's a pretty significant flaw

or overusing the dlplomatic lens
where you might see the natives as pigeon-holed as
'a regional annoyance'
'a Cold War pawn'

a historian or a political scientist might see things beyond the plastic mandarins of The State Department, or just 'the accepted wisdom' of Whitehall

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think of it this way, he focuses too much on the Hive Mind of the Diplomatic core, because he likes to focus way way way too much on that

and not everyone is going to think like Dulles, Acheson, Eden, Bevan, Selwyn-Lloyd either, they'll be people offering other alternatives and outlooks

and the Hive Mind can shift with a new leader, or new people in the state department, national security council, intelligence agencies, for various nations

Cuba is big shit for Kennedy, pushed to the side after three years
same thing with Eden and Egypt

both with a failed invasion
and Eden is the winner of Camelot
and JFK is the loser at Goldeneye

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Louis has a talent at wring
I don't think he has a talent at deep questions sometimes

and things just feel smoothed over with an easy to swallow narrative, way too many times.

and here is one example

"Louis's framework portrays decolonization as an orderly "transfer of power" managed by the British. Critics argue this sanitizes the often chaotic and violent realities of imperial withdrawal."


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The New York Review of Books

A brief passage in Louis’s Suez chapters made me wonder how far the use, fifty years later, of hitherto classified sources may sometimes give undue substance to highly subjective stories.

Sir Pierson Dixon, the British ambassador at the United Nations, like other key British ambassadors, whether in Cairo, Paris, or Washington, had not been informed in advance of his country’s attack on Egypt.

Defending an indefensible action that he did not believe in was the worst experience of his professional life.

Dixon, however, was not close to Hammarskjöld and he resented Hammarskjöld’s openly critical attitude toward the Anglo-French-Israeli operation. Nonetheless, by assembling and deploying within a few days the first UN peacekeeping force, Hammarskjöld made it possible for the British and French forces to be withdrawn with reasonable dignity. Reluctantly recognizing this fact, Dixon commented, in a cable to the foreign office,

"Hammarskjoeld, I think, is on the verge of collapse…. Surprisingly enough this strange intellectual whom we have elevated into a superman is made of flesh and blood…. He literally burst into tears this evening…."

To one who worked with Hammarskjöld throughout his time at the UN, his “bursting into tears” in the presence of Dixon seems so out of character that I find it virtually impossible to believe

Nor was this alleged loss of control ever mentioned or recorded in their private notes by Ralph Bunche and others who regularly accompanied Hammarskjöld at all such meetings. Dixon’s story allows him to patronize the “strange” Swedish intellectual to whom the British were so deeply in debt.

In Louis’s account, the partition plans for India and Palestine and the independence of Libya and Sudan foreshadow more recent international problems that have arisen in all these countries, as does the Anglo-US cloak-and-dagger scheme for regime change that toppled the Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Musaddeq in 1953—successful in the short term, but leading to rebellion and Islamic revolution later on.

In Iraq the 1958 coup and revolution, led by Brigadier Abdul Karim Qasim, in which the king and crown prince and Britain’s all-powerful ally, Nuri Pasha es Said, were assassinated, swept away British influence in Iraq forever; not many years later, the country came under the control of the Baathist dictatorship whose overthrow has brought about the current crisis.

In 1971 the withdrawal of British power, for reasons of economy, from east of Suez, and most notably from the Persian Gulf, by Harold Wilson’s Labour government, marked the effective end of the empire.

Looking today at the shining towers, ultra-modern cities, and colossal opulence of the Gulf States, it is hard to remember that Britain’s surprise decision to withdraw from the Gulf protectorates without designating a successor caused intense anxiety at the time.

The transformation of the Gulf States and their oil and natural gas reserves into major centers of finance, trade, and tourism has become a stabilizing element in one of the world’s tensest and most important strategic areas. Even the system of federation—Britain’s favored, but usually abortive, constitutional concept—has flourished in the Gulf in the United Arab Emirates.

Louis’s work in archives, diaries, letters, and memoirs sheds new light on people who were rearranging the geopolitical map of the world with a self-confidence and a lack of resistance that now seem inconceivable.

British leaders, politicians, and civil servants saw themselves, usually without undue personal vanity, as leading the world forward to better times. A rigorous classical education provided many of them with formidable powers of analysis that were often tempered by style, elegance, and wit.

Louis introduces many striking personalities. Most are now-forgotten public servants like Sir Percy Anderson, the architect of Britain’s African empire and the star of the Berlin Congo Conference in 1884.

A few are still remembered. Roger Casement, the ultimately doomed Irish patriot, was the British consul in Leopold II’s Congo. In a 1903 report he denounced the Congo Free State as “a hell on earth” characterized by “wholesale oppression and shocking mismanagement.” His report scandalized Europe and inspired E.D. Morel’s Congo Reform Association. In 1908 the Belgian government annexed Leopold’s private Congo estate.

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Wellesley College

In comparison to both Harrison and Huber, in Ends of British Imperialism, Wm. Roger Louis examines the collapse of the British Empire in the mid-twentieth century and the ensuing Suez Crisis in 1956.

While the timeline has progressed almost a full century, the motivations behind British intervention do not vary greatly from those of the 1880s.

Louis operates under the assumption that the empire served to support Britain economically, and the transportation provided by the Canal served as an important cog in that machine (EBI 29).

Prompted by Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal Company in 1956, the British moved to protect the loss of important economic interests, which had persisted beyond the formal dissolution of empire, as well as the financial importance of the Company itself (EBI 478).

The significant variance in this incident, however, was the presence of Cold War political tensions.

The revival of Arab nationalism, reminiscent of Arabi in the previous century, concerned the Western powers in the face of increasing Soviet influence and the instability it brought (EBI 482).

Nasser himself was viewed as a loose cannon in the international order, as an influential member of the Third World and his attempts to remain free of influence from either sphere (EBI 649).

Louis juxtaposes these political concerns with economic arguments framing the Canal’s nationalization as “theft,” highlighting the continued synchronicity of political and economic aims (EBI 653).

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What Impact Did Decolonisation have on Britain?
Richard J. Vale

Britain ultimately came to rely on their formula of self-determination as a palatable answer to their critics. Louis (2006: 188) points out: ‘In the rocks, shoals and other remnants of empire, what made more sense than to allow the inhabitants of Gibraltar or the Falklands to determine
their own future?’

For Britain, permitting particular former colonies to determine their own fate gave the appearance
of scaling back the empire, when in actuality it enabled Britain to assert a significant degree of authority over a consenting population.

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[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book emphatically defines the distinction between academic history and popular history, being an exemplar of the former category. I think I became aware of it and bought it around the time of its publication, perhaps because of a review in Foreign Affairs? After dodging it for over a decade because of its intimidating heft, I finished the thousand pages in less than a year. It is a collection of essays on the titular topic taken from Louis' apparently distinguished career as a historian. Being a sort of greatest hits compilation makes the book less formidable in the actual reading than its size might imply. While all the essays are related by subject, they may be read individually; the reader is never in danger of losing a narrative thread.

That said, there are themes other than those explicitly described by the title that hold the book together. One is the historical fact that some British policy-makers and academics began to see the Commonwealth (in the form of a trade bloc) as a goal to be managed toward even before it became clear that the formal Empire would not survive. Indeed, self-government within the Commonwealth for the dependencies was an outcome actively sought by some. Another interesting theme is that post-war British policy-makers often took advantage of the American obsession with fighting Communism to advance their separate agenda. While they recognized the USSR as a strategic rival, the ideological aspect of the struggle wasn't as potent.

This book is amazing. The footnotes describe the author's access to unpublished material, archives recently made available at the time of writing, and historians of the highest order. The period under examination runs from roughly the 1880s to the 1970s and, in tracking the calving of the Empire, the essays cover everything from individual public servants to international conferences to political struggles between Her Majesty's Government, the Colonial Office, and the Foreign Office. U.S. officials also feature (John Foster Dulles gets his own essay in the context of the Middle East and Suez). To pique the interest of current readers, I'll add that the CIA's coup of Mossadeq gets its own comprehensive essay.

Most folks won't have even the remotest interest in undertaking a work like this. But for those so inclined, this is the real deal. This could be the backbone of a graduate level seminar. And, happily, the writing is perky enough to make the essays actually enjoyable to read.

[Brian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Ends of British Imperialism provides an excellent survey of how the British Empire rose to prominence in the 1800's and then began a decent after the second world war. This book is a collection of William Roger Louis lifetime essays and focus on different aspects of the process. William Roger Louis is one of the most respected scholar's on this area of British history and these essays are a treasure trove for anyone wanting to understand why the British Empire fell. The collapse of empire is often described as happening in four main events. The fall of Singapore, the independence of India, the Suez Crisis and the winds of change that granted independence to most of Africa. This book covers all of those areas but spends the bulk of the time on Suez and analyzing its importance in the fall of the empire. It is very well written although it can jump around at times due to the fact that it is a collection of essays and not a continuous book. Also for the historians out there it does have a decent summary of historiography in the last three chapters that really give the reader a good sense of what the general historic community has to say on this topic and for those wanting to read more it will be an invaluable guide to finding more books to read on the subject and what their arguments say. All in all a superb book and one that should be read!

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wm. Roger Louis has a knack for clear and cogent writing, and his many essays are reflective of his skill as a writer and historian. Here, in one volume, the historian (or casual history reader) can tap one of the finest reserves of historical writing on decolonization and British imperialism available.

[Benemint · Rating 4 out of 5]

He is... a very old (-fashioned) diplomatic historian. It's really easy to tell in any of his work that he loves his work -- that makes me happy (am i weird?). This collection of essays is a good companion to have if you are studying anything related to imperialism, inter-war diplomacy, internationalism, decolonization, and the early Cold War.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

A governmental bureaucrat spreading governmental orthodoxy without any filter. Of course, British Imperialism is over, this is why British troops are "keeping the peace" in precisely British controlled territories like Iraq or participating in the health giving embargo of Iran.