davidbfpo
03-19-2015, 02:26 PM
The Anglo-French exit from their empires features on several threads, usually about one place, e.g. Algeria. A new book 'Fight or Flight: Britain, France, and their Roads from Empire' by Martin Thomas is fully reviewed and looks like a must buy for me. I already have Douglas Porch's book on France' wars and a few British episodes too.
It is a "broad brush" history, covering places rarely mentioned and four authors add in detail their reviews:https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/64404/h-diplo-roundtable-fight-or-flight-britain-france-and-their-roads There is a PDF URL too.
Here is the opening paragraph:
In the comparative study under review here, Fight or Flight, the talented and prolific British historian Martin Thomas provides an in-depth account of how and why the French and the British tried to hold on to their empires against all odds but in the end had to let go. Sometimes, Thomas tells us, the colonizers chose to cut their losses and get out in order to focus on other parts of the empire. It was a question of preservation. On other occasions, Thomas counters, they went to war to hold on to their prize possessions. In both cases, it –what we now call decolonization – was a messy, complicated, unpredictable, and terribly bloody business. There was no roadmap for ending empires because, at least in the immediate wake of World War II, neither the French nor the British decision-makers could fathom that imperial time was perhaps not universal.
I found the review via a Tweet from the Blog of the Centre for Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter (not yet fully explored, maybe it a resource to check):http://imperialglobalexeter.com/
It is a "broad brush" history, covering places rarely mentioned and four authors add in detail their reviews:https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/64404/h-diplo-roundtable-fight-or-flight-britain-france-and-their-roads There is a PDF URL too.
Here is the opening paragraph:
In the comparative study under review here, Fight or Flight, the talented and prolific British historian Martin Thomas provides an in-depth account of how and why the French and the British tried to hold on to their empires against all odds but in the end had to let go. Sometimes, Thomas tells us, the colonizers chose to cut their losses and get out in order to focus on other parts of the empire. It was a question of preservation. On other occasions, Thomas counters, they went to war to hold on to their prize possessions. In both cases, it –what we now call decolonization – was a messy, complicated, unpredictable, and terribly bloody business. There was no roadmap for ending empires because, at least in the immediate wake of World War II, neither the French nor the British decision-makers could fathom that imperial time was perhaps not universal.
I found the review via a Tweet from the Blog of the Centre for Imperial and Global History at the University of Exeter (not yet fully explored, maybe it a resource to check):http://imperialglobalexeter.com/