Modern Britain, 1750 to the Present

Introduction

In 1931 Britain only just remained the world's pre-eminent superpower. The United States of America may have eclipsed her industrial output and become her creditor during the Great War, and the dollar may have displaced the pound as the global currency in 1931, yet territorially the sun still never set on the vast British Empire. Even in 1953, Britons could still imagine themselves as living in one of the world's most powerful countries. They had again emerged from the Second World War victorious, with an Empire that still claimed a fifth of the globe, and able to attract most of the world's leaders for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. As Elizabeth ascended the throne, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest, the world's tallest mountain. Few cared that Hillary was from New Zealand and Tenzing from Nepal, for the expedition was British-led. The following year Roger Bannister became the first man to run a four-minute mile. By 1976, though, Britons could no longer be under any illusions about their country's diminished status. Some condescendingly joked, forgetting Britain had once been part of the Roman Empire, that it had been reduced to the status of Italy with rockets. That is to say, its Empire had been reduced to just Hong Kong, Gibraltar and the Falklands – and its economy ranked alongside Italy's in size. All that appeared to be left of Britain's former global influence was one of five seats on the United Nations Security Council and a formidable nuclear arsenal. How and why this seemingly dramatic reversal of fortune happened, and what it meant for Britain's place in the world, is the story of this chapter.

It is a story most often told as one of decline and fall, or of Britons wilfully abandoning the conceits of empire to focus on building their own social democracy. Neither is quite right. Social democracy remained embedded in broader imperial and global structures. It relied upon the reconfigured forms of imperialism that gave rise to what is sometimes described as the Third British Empire. Moreover, Britain's social democracy, like its new global role, was shaped and constrained by the Cold War that broke out between the United States and the Soviet Union after World War II.