ABSTRACT
The historian’s famous caution about ex post facto assessments should be borne in mind in any consideration of the rapid end of colonial empire. Because all of these European empires “fell” quickly, rather like houses of cards (but hardly in peaceful play), one can easily assume that the result was preordained or, at the very least, an expected outcome. Yet few individuals who supported empire thought that the game was up completely. In the immediate postwar environment of continental reconstruction and global realignment, colonial empire seemed chiefly to need its own “re” prefixed nouns: restoration of previous control and reform of previous policies. But the time for such efforts proved to be painfully short for those who believed in empire. Even before the fact of a “postcolonial world,” a British critic wrote a widely read assessment of finality – John Strachey’s The End of Empire (1959) – while an American academic wrote a widely used text as a sweeping analysis of decolonization – Rupert Emerson’s From Empire to Nation (1960).
