Memories of Post-Imperial Nations

The process of decolonization after the Second World War was perhaps the most important event of the twentieth century. Empires that had been built over many centuries were liquidated in a few decades. The fatal sequence war–depression–war had contributed to this historical dénouement. In 2006, I had published The Routledge Companion to Decolonization in which I had outlined this process. In 2008, I was asked to present a keynote address at a conference on empires organized by the German Historical Institute, London. I chose as my theme, ‘The Self-consciousness of Post-imperial Nations’. In this address I tried singlehandedly to deal with the reactions of six nations (Great Britain, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal and Japan) to the loss of their colonies. I had omitted Italy and realized later on that this was a mistake. I then felt the need of involving representatives of the respective nations in a dialogue on this subject. In July 2012, I met Antonio Costa Pinto in Lisbon and discussed this project with him and I was glad that he agreed to participate in it. In the course of the subsequent months I was able to contact colleagues in the other relevant countries. This time I did not miss out Italy and found an enthusiastic supporter of this venture in Nicola Labanca. My search for other contributors took some time, as many colleagues whom I approached were busy with their own projects. But finally I was able to get a good team together which included John Darwin representing Great Britain, Gert Oostindie, The Netherlands, Pedro Monaville, Belgium, Eric Savarese, France, Takashi Fujitani, Japan (in addition to those mentioned earlier). With all contributors I corresponded frequently.

In the course of this correspondence I got the idea that I should invite all these colleagues to a conference at Heidelberg in order to discuss the first drafts of their contributions and to coordinate our approach to the subject.