Dismantling the wardrobe

The house-clearance people refused to take my parents' huge wardrobe. So I set about breaking it up before burning it. The job was much harder than I expected. A good friend of mine, who knows a thing or two about furniture-making, later commented that of course dismantling a wardrobe is not easy – the secret is to know how it was put together. Something I had not known. It struck me that he was making an essential point not just about pulling a wardrobe to pieces, but about my field of study: that you cannot properly understand the dismantling of the British empire unless you know how it was constructed. Explanations of end and decline must show a continuity and congruence with the beginnings and the heyday, the dynamics of empire-building and the principles of imperial management. The empire is itself to be defined by the manner of its dismantling.

Although this book takes up more or less where Britain's imperial century, 1815–1914 leaves off, it is a sequel with a different character, focused more upon a single theme, ‘the end of empire’ in its political aspects. And it is more closely based on archival research. In a sense it is the finished product: Britain' imperial century can be regarded as the user's handbook.

There are already many books on the general theme of the decline, fall, eclipse, end, liquidation, collapse, dissolution, or decolonisation of the British empire.