United Kingdom

Things happened, and the rest is history

1. 01

   The Easter Rising and Irish independence

   Event

   What happened

   On Easter Monday, 24 April 1916, Irish republicans seize buildings in Dublin and proclaim an Irish Republic. British forces crush the Rising within a week, and its leaders are executed in May. In the 1918 general election Sinn Féin wins most Irish seats and sets up its own parliament, the Dáil, in 1919. A war of independence follows until a truce in July 1921.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 created the Irish Free State as a dominion, while Northern Ireland stayed in the United Kingdom. It was the first major loss of territory from the British state in the twentieth century. A civil war among Irish nationalists over the treaty followed in 1922 and 1923. The Free State left the Commonwealth and became the Republic of Ireland in 1949.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryArticles of Agreement for a Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland. Signed London, 6 December 1921.
   2. BookFoster, R. F. Modern Ireland 1600-1972. London: Allen Lane, 1988.
2. 02

   The Statute of Westminster and the dominions

   Event

   What happened

   At the Imperial Conference of 1926, Britain and the dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the Irish Free State and Newfoundland are declared autonomous and equal in status. The Statute of Westminster of 1931 gives legal force to this. It removes the power of the British Parliament to make laws for the dominions without their consent.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The statute created the model of a Commonwealth of self-governing states under a shared Crown. The same framework later let former colonies, including India in 1949, remain members as republics. Dominion independence in foreign policy was tested in 1939, when Ireland stayed neutral and the others chose for themselves to declare war on Germany.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryStatute of Westminster 1931. Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, 22 & 23 Geo. 5 c. 4, 1931.
   2. BookHyam, Ronald. Britain's Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918-1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
3. 03

   The Second World War and the strain on imperial power

   Event

   What happened

   In February 1942 Singapore, Britain's main base in Asia, surrenders to Japan, and Hong Kong and Burma have already fallen or are falling. Britain wins the war with the help of the United States and the Soviet Union, but ends it heavily in debt. In 1945 the new Labour government under Clement Attlee takes office, and in 1946 Britain secures a large American loan.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The war weakened both Britain's finances and its hold on opinion in Asia, where the fall of Singapore damaged its prestige. Historians disagree about how far economic exhaustion, nationalist movements or changing British attitudes explain the decolonisation that followed. Most agree that the war made the old imperial system far harder to sustain. In 1947 Britain ended its support for Greece and Turkey and handed over its Palestine problem to the United Nations.

   Sources

   1. BookLouis, William Roger. Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
   2. BookDarwin, John. The End of the British Empire: The Historical Debate. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
4. 04

   Independence and partition of India

   Event

   What happened

   In February 1947 Prime Minister Attlee announces that Britain will leave India by June 1948. Lord Mountbatten, the new viceroy, brings the date forward. On 14 and 15 August 1947 the separate states of Pakistan and India become independent, and the Punjab and Bengal are divided between them.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Partition caused huge violence and one of the largest migrations in history, with millions of people moving across the new borders. Estimates of the dead vary widely, from several hundred thousand to over a million. Indian independence was followed by that of Ceylon and Burma in 1948. It set a precedent that made it hard to refuse self-government elsewhere in the empire.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryIndian Independence Act 1947. Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, 10 & 11 Geo. 6 c. 30, 18 July 1947.
   2. BookKhan, Yasmin. The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
5. 05

   The Suez Crisis of 1956

   Event

   What happened

   In July 1956 Egypt's president Nasser nationalises the Suez Canal Company. In October Britain and France secretly agree with Israel that Israel will attack Egypt, so that they can intervene. British and French forces land at Port Said in early November. Under pressure from the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Nations, and with a run on the pound, they accept a ceasefire and withdraw.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Suez showed that Britain could not act abroad against the wishes of the United States. Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned in January 1957. Many historians see it as a turning point that pushed the government to accept decolonisation more openly, though some argue that the policy was already changing. Harold Macmillan, who became prime minister, gave his 'wind of change' speech in Cape Town in February 1960.

   Sources

   1. BookKyle, Keith. Suez: Britain's End of Empire in the Middle East. London: I. B. Tauris, 2003.
   2. PrimaryHarold Macmillan, 'Wind of Change' speech to the South African Parliament, Cape Town, 3 February 1960.
6. 06

   Independence in Africa and the Caribbean

   Event

   What happened

   Ghana becomes independent in March 1957, the first sub-Saharan colony to do so. Nigeria follows in 1960, then Tanganyika, Jamaica and Trinidad, Uganda and Kenya in the early 1960s. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved in 1963, and Malawi and Zambia become independent in 1964.

   ↓ The rest is history

   By the end of the 1960s most of Britain's colonies in Africa and the Caribbean were independent, and nearly all joined the Commonwealth. Independence was sometimes peaceful and sometimes followed conflict, as in Kenya's Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s. In Rhodesia the white minority government declared independence unilaterally in 1965, and the country became Zimbabwe only in 1980.

   Sources

   1. BookButler, L. J. Britain and Empire: Adjusting to a Post-Imperial World. London: I. B. Tauris, 2002.
   2. BookHyam, Ronald. Britain's Declining Empire: The Road to Decolonisation, 1918-1968. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
7. 07

   Migration and the British Nationality Act

   Event

   What happened

   The British Nationality Act of 1948 confirms that people in the colonies and Commonwealth are British subjects. In June 1948 the ship Empire Windrush brings several hundred Caribbean migrants to Tilbury. Over the next decade many people from the Caribbean and South Asia come to work in Britain. Parliament then passes the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of 1962 to restrict entry.

   ↓ The rest is history

   Later laws, notably in 1968 and 1971, tightened controls further. Migration from the former empire made Britain a multi-ethnic society and shaped later debates about race and national identity. In 2018 the Windrush scandal revealed that some long-settled Caribbean-born residents had been wrongly treated as illegal immigrants.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryBritish Nationality Act 1948. Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, 11 & 12 Geo. 6 c. 56, 1948.
   2. BookHansen, Randall. Citizenship and Immigration in Post-War Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
8. 08

   The handover of Hong Kong in 1997

   Event

   What happened

   In 1984 Britain and China sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration, agreeing that Hong Kong will return to China on 1 July 1997. Hong Kong island and Kowloon had been ceded to Britain in the nineteenth century, and the New Territories were leased for 99 years from 1898. The handover ceremony takes place at midnight on 30 June 1997, with Prince Charles and Governor Chris Patten present.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The Joint Declaration promised that Hong Kong would keep its own social and economic system for fifty years under the formula 'one country, two systems'. Most historians treat the handover as the end of the British Empire in practice. Britain kept a handful of small overseas territories, which it still calls British Overseas Territories.

   Sources

   1. PrimaryJoint Declaration of the Government of the United Kingdom and the Government of the People's Republic of China on the Question of Hong Kong. Signed Beijing, 19 December 1984.
   2. BookTsang, Steve. A Modern History of Hong Kong. London: I. B. Tauris, 2004.
9. 09

   The empire acquired in a fit of absence of mind

   Popular belief

   The legend

   It is often said that Britain acquired its empire 'in a fit of absence of mind', without any plan, and that it gave it up just as casually, by a slow and peaceful process of handing over power.

   ↓ The rest is history

   The phrase comes from the historian John Seeley's lectures The Expansion of England, published in 1883. He used it to describe the way Britain had expanded without a single settled design. Historians have since shown that the empire was built through many deliberate wars, conquests and commercial decisions. Decolonisation was not always calm either, as the violence in Palestine, Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus shows. Archives released in the 2010s revealed that British officials destroyed or hid many colonial records at independence.

   Sources

   1. BookSeeley, John Robert. The Expansion of England. London: Macmillan, 1883.
   2. BookElkins, Caroline. Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya. New York: Henry Holt, 2005.
10. 10

    The empire on which the sun never sets

    Popular belief

    The legend

    The British Empire is said to be 'the empire on which the sun never sets', because its territories were spread so widely around the globe that it was always daytime somewhere in them.

    ↓ The rest is history

    The phrase was used earlier for the Spanish empire of the sixteenth century and was applied to Britain in the nineteenth. It was roughly true in the age of the empire's greatest extent, which was reached in the early 1920s after the First World War, when the empire held about a quarter of the world's land area. The saying declined with the empire itself. A later quip says the sun never set on the empire because God could not trust the British in the dark. By the end of the century only scattered small territories were left.

    Sources

    1. BookJames, Lawrence. The Rise and Fall of the British Empire. London: Little, Brown, 1994.
    2. BookFerguson, Niall. Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World. London: Allen Lane, 2003.
11. 11

    Britain gave its colonies independence out of generosity

    Popular belief

    The legend

    A common view holds that Britain peacefully and willingly granted independence to its colonies as part of a planned and generous policy of preparing them for self-rule.

    ↓ The rest is history

    British governments did speak of preparing colonies for self-government, and many handovers were negotiated. But in most cases the pace was driven by nationalist movements, financial weakness and international pressure rather than by a settled plan. In several places Britain fought to keep control, including Malaya from 1948 to 1960 and Kenya from 1952. Historians debate how far the process was managed and how far it was forced. The Hola camp deaths in Kenya in 1959 and the compensation paid in 2013 to Mau Mau survivors show the conflict that lay behind the polite phrases.

    Sources

    1. BookDarwin, John. Britain and Decolonisation: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988.
    2. BookAnderson, David. Histories of the Hanged: The Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005.