ABSTRACT
BRITISH AND OTHER OECOLO N ISATIONS The previous chapters have mapped the convergence of metropolitan, colonial and international factors which conditioned the end of the Briti sh Empire after 1945, and which vari ed over time and space. Yet, Briti sh decolonisation did not take place within an isolated vacuum; decolonisat ion was a European phenomenon also encompassing the empires of France, Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands, Spain and, if we extend OUf analysis to the very recent past, even that of the Soviet Union/Russia. A non-European power, the United States, also relin - quished formal control in its only colony of substance, the Phil ippines. The ~riti sh experience of decolonisation shared many of the characteri stics with the end of other empires, but it also differed markedly in a number of ways.
