ABSTRACT
By the end of World War II in Asia and the Pacific, the British Empire had changed beyond recall and almost beyond repair. India, the ‘jewel in the crown’, a major source of imperial power and reason for imperial communications, moved rapidly to its divided independence. Burma left the Empire and Commonwealth altogether. In Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, notions of independence were flourishing, inseminated by British liberal ideas, encouraged by American messianism, stimulated by Japan’s humiliation of the European powers, urged in places by communist revolutionary fervour, and made more effective by Britain’s near exhaustion of resources after six devastating years of war.
