Review by:  
Bryan S. Glass
University of Texas at Austin
Ends of British Imperialism:  The Scramble for Empire, Suez and
Decolonization
Wm. Roger Louis (London:  I.B. Tauris, 2006), 1065 pages

Professor Louis’ collection of essays contains a number of interrelated themes on the
downfall of the British Empire beginning with the Scramble for African colonies in 1882
and concluding with the withdrawal of British troops east of the Suez Canal in 1971.  
Louis states that the formal British Empire began to rapidly unravel after the Suez
debacle in 1956.  However, this did not signal an end to British informal influence in
the region.  In the Cold War era, the British played the crucial role of negotiating
informal ties with many of their formal colonies in Africa and the Middle East for
strategic purposes.  Thus, strategy held a prominent place in the formal annexation of
territory at the end of the nineteenth century and the ensuing switch to informal
empire in the 1950s and 1960s.  Accordingly, the move to informal empire in the
1950s and 1960s, with the support of the United States, mirrored the formal Scramble
for African colonies at the end of the nineteenth century.

Of the essays on the Scramble for Africa, the biographical selection on Sir Percy
Anderson, the Foreign Office official who shaped the outcome of the European
conquest of the African continent, exemplifies the strategic concerns of the British to
maintain control of the Suez Canal, Egypt, and the Nile.  The obsession of Anderson
to control eastern Africa points to the value of the route to India, “the Jewel in the
Crown.”  Anderson's actions illustrate that Africa’s main attraction to the British Empire
revolved around its importance as a gate to the East.  Once India became
independent in 1947, the ensuing focus on consolidating control in northeast Africa
and the Middle East underscored, in addition to the region’s strategic importance, the
British need to maintain the prestige of its Empire.  This need would lead them to
humiliation at Suez.  However, the strategic importance of the Empire would not
dissipate in the midst of the Cold War.  Instead, the United States’ aversion towards
colonialism, as focused on in numerous essays throughout the book, forced the
Empire to transform into one of informal influence.

When studying the process of decolonization, the role of the Americans in the
eventual demise of the formal British Empire cannot be overstated.  Following the
Second World War, Louis explains that the Americans propped up the British Empire
out of necessity to combat the spread of communism in southern and western Asia.  
The financial, and seemingly moral, support of the United States provided the British
with the impetus needed to restore the Empire, starting with the Middle East.  In this
pivotal chapter of the book, written with Ronald Robinson and entitled “The
Imperialism of Decolonization”, the strategic nature of British Imperialism from 1882
through the 1960s becomes apparent.  According to the authors, in the late
nineteenth century the British Imperial strategy centered on keeping hostile powers
away from the Upper Nile region and the Horn of Africa to protect the route to India
and the East.  Following the Suez Crisis of late 1956, the British set their sights on
stopping Nasser’s drive southward along the supposed “trans-African lifeline to Aden
and Singapore.”  While the United States refused to participate in the British, French,
and Israeli attack on Egypt in 1956, they wholeheartedly encouraged the
implementation of informal influence to stop the spread of communism.  
Consequently, the British, encouraged and funded by the Americans, used the
medium of subsidies in Ethiopia and the promise of independence for Somalia to gain
compliance from their respective leaders.  The British continued this process over the
next fifteen years by offering independence to their remaining possessions in
exchange for informal influence.  Thus, this imperialism of decolonization created
alliances for the West among former colonies, which proved useful for combating the
Red Menace.  In the end, the United States’ refusal to support formal British
Imperialism at Suez led to its demise.  The Americans chose, instead, for the British to
follow the route of establishing informal influence through the imperialism of
decolonization.

Professor Louis’ selection of essays serves as an intellectual tour de force for
understanding the numerous complexities surrounding the final decades of British
Imperialism, not least of which proves to be the ascendancy of American power
following the Second World War.  Moreover, Louis’ reputation as an indefatigable
researcher emerges from every page of this monumental tome.  With The Ends of
British Imperialism, Roger Louis solidifies his place as the foremost historian of the
British Empire in his generation.
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October 2006