ABSTRACT
The British Empire was a powerful strategic entity, but the imperial system's continued existence was dependent on the United States for both military and economic security. The British had to contend with the international institutions of the 'new world order'. The period between the late 1940s and the late 1980s was unique in the sense that it was dominated by two rival superpowers the United States and the Soviet Union. The war of independence against Britain in the eighteenth century was ingrained in US national mythology, and this revolutionary tradition tended to make Americans sympathetic towards colonial people's seeking self-determination. In the global 'struggle for existence' the Americans came to believe from the late 1940s that the Soviet Union aimed at world domination, the United States had no choice but to halt communist expansionism by bolstering non-communist regions of Third World. The Anglo-American coalition in decolonisation would seem to be epitomised by the de-radicalisation of late-colonial politics in British Guiana.
