British Decolonization
What forces and considerations determined the nature and timing of British decolonization?
“In the end it may well be that Britain will be honored by historians more for the way she disposed of an empire than for the way in which she acquired it.”
David Ormsby Gore
For years the British people proudly proclaimed that the sun never set on the British Empire. But starting in 1947 with the independence of India, the empire began to crumble and a short twenty years later this once mighty empire ceased to exist. Over 400 million people were given independent self-government in this time period. This sudden decolonization has caused people to ask the question: Why did the British suddenly relinquish their empire?
One of the major forces which helped to change the British attitude towards the colonies was the cost of administration. After the Second World War, Britain was deep in debt.[1] The British were depending on loans from the United States to keep the country afloat and could not afford to hold on to the colonies for much longer. Between 1939 and 1950 the cost of administering the colonies had increased from 5.5 million pounds to 41.5 million[2] and the London staff of the Colonial Office had more than doubled.[3] This dramatic increase in administration costs drew attention to the colonies and caused some British politicians to question the advantages of retaining them. To many, it appeared that the colonies were a burden that Britain could do without.
The Second World War gave rise to two new super powers: the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Both were staunchly in favour of the dissolution of the British Empire. The Soviet Union was against capitalist imperialism, and the United States was a former British colony which sympathized with those areas that still had colonial status. In 1941 American President Franklin D. Roosevelt suggested that after the war the British,...
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