1 See my essay, ‘The Political Crisis of the European Nation‐State’ in Ionescu, G., ed., Between Sovereignty and Integration, London, Croom Helm, 1974 Google Scholar.

2 This remainder of this essay will form the first chapter in Volume II of my book Imperial Sunset to be published, it is hoped, in 1976. The research upon which the whole of the three‐volume project has been based has been financially supported by the Social Science Research Council, the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation.

3 See Imperial Sunset, Vol. I. Britain’s Liberal Empire, 1897–1921, London, Methuen, 1969; New York, Alfred Knopf, 1970, p. 344.

4 See Brissoniére, Yves G., Commonwealth D’Abord, Paris, Editions Domat Montchrestien, 1955 Google Scholar.

5 In the preface to Commonwealth d’Abord, M. André Siegfried wrote of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ meetings that they were not international discussions but ‘une entente de famille. Le résultat est énorme et on ne saurait assez féliciter la politique Britannique d’avoir réalisé ce chef d’oeuvre.’ He even argued as did other Europeans at the time that it might be possible to associate with a new United Europe not only Britain itself but the whole of this extra‐European system, still largely dependent upon her, as he put it.

6 ‘Bevin like everyone else hates the idea of our leaving India, but like everyone else has no alternative to suggest… Both he and (A.V.) Alexander are really imperialists and dislike any idea of leaving India.’ Lord Wavell, Diary entry 24 December 1946, in Wavell: The Viceroy’s Journal, ed., Penderei Moon, London, OUP, 1973, p. 399.

7 ‘While we could not foresee even at the end of the war, the rapidity with which the dissolution of the old system would come about, we knew in our hearts that the process was inevitable and right.’ Macmillan, Harold, Memoirs Vol. III, Tides of Fortune, London, Macmillan, 1969, p. xv Google Scholar.

8 For some recent discussion of Marxist theories of imperialism and their critics see Owen, Roger and Sutcliffe, Bob, eds., Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, London, Longman, 1972 Google Scholar.

9 Strachey, John, The End of Empire, London, Gollancz, 1959, p. 194 Google Scholar.

10 On the economic development aspects of British policy, see Drum‐mond, Ian M., British Economic Policy and the Empire 1919–1939, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1972 Google Scholar, and the same author’s Imperial Economic Policy 1917–1939, Allen & Unwin, London, 1974, which I hope to discuss at some length in a subsequent issue of Government and Opposition.

11 Quoted in Koss, Stephen, John Morley at the India Office, New Haven & London, Yale U.P., 1969, p. 182 Google Scholar

12 See Ronald Robinson ‘Non‐European Foundations of European Imperialism: a Sketch for a Theory of Collaboration’ in Owen and Sutcliffe, op. cit.

13 See Panikkar, K. M., Asia and Western Dominance ‐ A Survey of the Vasco da Gama Epoch of Asian History, 1498–1945, London, Allen & Unwin, 1953 Google Scholar.

14 ‘When the transfer of power was completed, energies which political leaders had previously devoted to the cause of hastening independence were released for direction towards more productive ends. It is our study (and our pride) that they have sometimes been used to develop new forms of Commonwealth co‐operation which are more effective than those sponsored under the old Imperial control. Political goodwill will enable administrative co‐operation to continue.’ Carrington, C. E., The Liquidation of the British Empire, London, Harrap, 1961, p. 87 Google Scholar.

15 For one account of what withdrawal meant in India, see Moon, Penderei, Divide and Quit, London, Chatto & Windus, 1961 Google Scholar.

16 The effects of sudden withdrawal in countries where substantial elements had identified themselves with British rule or relied upon British protection was a preoccupation of the late John Connell and was a theme stressed in his unpublished work, Retreat from Empire. He also gave it fictional treatment in his novel, Time and Chance (London, Constable, 1952). It was not of course wholly new in imperial history. Commenting on the fate of the American loyalists after the War of Independence, Joseph Chamberlain wrote: ‘It is curious how often in our history we have made our terms with rebels and left our loyal subjects in the lurch. We have suffered less than we deserved for what is both a crime and a folly.’Letter to Lady Dilke, 24 February 1901, in the possession of Mr John Sparrow.

17 Lloyd, Lord, Egypt since Cromer, Vol. 2, London, Macmillan, 1934, p. 359 Google Scholar. G. A. Lloyd, 1879–1941 (cr. Baron Lloyd, 1925) was Governor of Bombay from 1918 to 1923 after wartime experience in the Middle East. He was High Commissioner for Egypt and the Sudan, 1925–9, and Secretary of State for the Colonies, May 1940‐February 1941.

18 The grant of independence to Iraq in 1932 with its fatal consequences for the Assyrians, and the Jews of Baghdad was an earlier instance. See Kedourie, E., The Chatham House Version and other Middle Eastern Studies, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970 Google Scholar, Chap. X, ‘Minorities’.

19 The total transformation of the colonial empire within a single generation is agreeably illustrated in the autobiography of Bradley, Sir Kenneth, Once a District Officer, London, Macmillan, 1966 Google Scholar.

20 The concentration of historkns on diplomatic documents and hence on the archives of the Foreign Office has made most of the popular histories of appeasement under‐rate the role of the Commonwealth and of Dominion statesmen. See e.g. Gilbert, Martin and Gott, Richard, The Appeasers, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963 Google Scholar, and Mosley, Leonard, On Borrowed Time: How World War II Began, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969 Google Scholar.

21 Cabinet meeting, 30 May 1922. PRO.CAB. 23/30 Mtg 30 (22). The reference to ‘a Mohammedan Empire’ refers to the Indian government’s attempt to influence policy towards Turkey.

22 Hugo, Grant, Britain in Tomorrow’s World, London, Chatto & Windus, 1969, p. 27 Google Scholar.

23 ‘The urge to create some association of countries, looking like a “British group”, even if Britain had no control over them at times of crisis, was strong and on the whole successful between say, 1947 and 1960.’ Miller, J. D. B., ‘The Decline of Inter se’ in International Journal, Vol. XXIV, No. 4, Toronto, Autumn, 1969, p. 798 Google Scholar.

24 Ibid., pp. 769–70.

25 Hancock, W. K., Argument of Umpire, London, Penguin, 1943, pp. 154, 158–9Google Scholar. It has been pointed out that although Sir Keith Hancock does not mention this little book in his autobiography, Country and Calling (London, 1954), it must be regarded as ‘a highly effective boiling down of the polemical elements’ in his great Survey of Commonwealth Affairs, Vol. 1, London, 1937; Vol. II, Part 1, London, 1940; Part 2, London, 1942. See Miller, J. D. B., ‘Hancock, Mansergh and the Commonwealth Surveys’, Historical Studies, Vol. 13, No. 51, Melbourne, 10 1968, p. 398 fnCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Hancock uses the terms ‘British Empire’ and ‘British Commonwealth’ interchangeably in Argument of Empire, no doubt on the same grounds as in the Survey, where he had claimed that the British Commonwealth should be viewed as the whole empire, seen in the light of its progress towards self‐government, Survey, Vol. I, pp. 60–1.

27 This is very clearly brought out in Middlemas, Keith and Barnes, John, Baldwin (London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969)Google Scholar; if Baldwin was the dominant political figure in Britain in the inter‐war years it was partly because he was so representative a one.

28 See e.g. Barnett, Correlli, The Collapse of British Power, London, Eyre Methuen, 1972 Google Scholar.

29 See the interesting if brief discussion of the views of Sir Harold Nicolson and Lord Strang in Grant Hugo, op. cit., pp. 10–15; cf Vital, D., 1, London, Allen & Unwin, 1968, pp. 96 ffGoogle Scholar.

30 The role of the Dominions in the abdication crisis of 1936 is very revealing in this respect. See Middlemas and Barnes, op. cit., Chap. 34.

31 One’s sympathy with the argument for empire tends to fluctuate with the performance of the successor‐states and one impediment to making up one’s mind is the extent to which the post‐imperial world has so far failed to find durable forms of government. Between the times the first and second drafts of this chapter were written Bangladesh had successfully seceded from Pakistan and ‘Biafra’ had tried in vain to secede from Nigeria. Economic and social progress are even harder to assess. Some would argue that the colonial impact in Africa in particular has been too shallow to allow of any genetical interpénétration of the races and that the removal of the former upper strata provided by the colonizers must mean a decline in the fortunes of the new states. See Darlington, C. D., The Evolution of Man and Society, London, Allen & Unwin, 1969, p. 668 Google Scholar.