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Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and the Roads from Empire, by Martin Thomas
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Although shattered by war, in 1945 Britain and France still controlled the world's two largest colonial empires, with imperial territories stretched over four continents. And they appeared determined to keep them: the roll-call of British and French politicians, soldiers, settlers and writers who promised in word and print at this time to defend their colonial possessions at all costs is a long one. Yet, within twenty years both empires had almost completely disappeared.
The collapse was cataclysmic. Peaceable 'transfers of power' were eclipsed by episodes of territorial partition and mass violence whose bitter aftermath still lingers. Hundreds of millions across four continents were caught up in the biggest reconfiguration of the international system ever seen.
In the meantime, even the most dogged imperialists, who had once stiffly defended imperial rule, ultimately bent to the wind of change. By the early 1950s Winston Churchill had retreated from his wartime pledge to keep Britain's Empire intact. And General de Gaulle, who quit the French presidency in 1946 complaining that France's new post-war democracy would never hang on to the country's imperial prizes, narrowly escaped assassination a generation later - after negotiating the humiliating French withdrawal from Algeria.
Fight or Flight is the first ever comparative account of this dramatic collapse, explaining the end of the British and French colonial empires as an intertwined, even co-dependent process. Decolonization gathered momentum, not as an empire-specific affair, but as a global one, in which the wider march of twentieth-century history played a vital part: industrial concentration and global depression, World War and Cold War, Communism and other anti-colonial ideologies, mass consumerism and the allure of American popular culture. Above all, as Martin Thomas shows, the internationalization of colonial affairs made it impossible to contain colonial problems locally, spelling the end for Europe's two largest colonial empires in less than two decades from the end of the Second World War.
- Sales Rank: #1516972 in Books
- Published on: 2014-05-13
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.50" h x 1.90" w x 9.40" l, 2.12 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 560 pages
Review
A short review cannot do justice to the richness, the comprehensiveness, and the scholarly depth of Thomas's work, which will surely serve as a leading text in its area for many years. War in History an impressively researched book which manages to marry breadth and nuance, and which ought to be read by scholars of war and imperialism alike. Army Historical Research Martin Thomas tells this story in a book that is based in an impressive range of reading. He works hard to give a balanced account. Richard Vinen, The Times Literary Supplement His book is a refreshing new take on the end of empire. Mihir Bose, History Today Hugely impressive Literary Review This is an ambitious book...Few historians these days have the ability to embark on such a wide-ranging comparative study. Kwasi Kwarteng, The Times Thomas's account is comprehensive and well researched. Kwasi Kwarteng, The Times [An] immensely impressive comparative study. The Scotsman This is a skilfully crafted book which draws on material from British, French, and American archives ... It deserves, and will undoubtedly repay, careful study by anyone interested in the post-war histories of the two protagonists. It is an important book that raises big questions and tries to answer them, and we should be grateful that it does. David French, Diplomacy & Statecraft [Thomas'] book rises above many others by providing a compelling and comprehensive account of European decolonization. There are few other works that match Fight or Flight in both scope and depth in a single-volume. It is this above all else that commends this book to a wide audience. Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, History
About the Author
Martin Thomas is Professor of Imperial History in the Department of History at the University of Exeter, where he has taught since 2003. He founded the University's Centre for the Study of War, State and Society, which supports research into the impact of armed conflict on societies and communities. He is a past winner of a Philip Leverhulme prize for outstanding research and a holder of a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship. He has published widely on twentieth century French and imperial history, including The French Empire between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics and Society, Empires of Intelligence: Security Services and Colonial Disorder after 1914, Crises of Empire: Decolonization and Europe's Imperial States, 1918-1975, and most recently Violence and Colonial Order: Police, Workers and Protest in the European Colonial Empires, 1918-1940.
Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
A thoughtful analysis of the demise of the French and British empires. A difficult but highly informative book.
By lyndonbrecht
I'm going to rate this as a qualified five stars. It is an excellent study that compares how the British and French handled the end of their colonial empires. The "fight or flight" in the title refers to how some colonies were freed with no particular trauma and others only after extended vioolence. The research is thorough, the writing is excellent and the book is highly detailed. It is essentially an academic study without the scholarly apparatus. It is particularly good on the French in Madagascar, Indochina and Algeria, and the British in India, Malaya and Kenya. There's some about other colonies--a little about Rhodesia, Nigeria and elsewhere. The book also looks in some detail at the British in Palestine, and Thomas essentially says the British just left and left chaos behind. His comments about Palestinians will likely anger readers who are pro-Israeli.
That said, this is a slow read because of the detail, a welter of names, places, policies and events, some of which are widely familiar such as the Battle of Algiers and some of which is not, such as the fairly gory and entirely brutal British response in Kenya, or the macabre business of throwing people from helicopters into the sea. For someone interested in the subject but without the time to read the whole book (it took me more than a day, and I'm a fast reader) I would recommend the concluding chapter, which is a fine summary and includes some discussion of how historians have seen the decolonization phenomenon. A reader could pick out particular chapters of interest (most detailed on the most savage war, in Algeria) but that might miss the comparisons.
Thomas does not seem to have a particular political agenda. He does more or less condemn some of the policies, and also the violence. Terror was widely used both by rebelling groups and by security forces. Some of the French security forces in Algeria were noted for widespread use of torture, but there were some stains on British honor as well, which included summary executions. Alas, the victims of both imperial and revolutionary violence were the local populations. The settler colonies (Southern Rhodesia and Algeria in particular) were particularly complex situations. Thomas does say that the ending of imperial rule did not end difficult and violent situations (case in point: the massive violence and waves of refugees following independence of India and its partition).
The maps are fairly good. The book has a few interesting photos but would be improved by more.
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